ReAnimator: A Life's Work
by The Smiling Shadow
Summary: Herbert West denied all that made him human in order to simply work, and work, for he was convinced he would never die. But he will return to where his work began, and see he himself is the culmination of another's hard work. He never knew his parents.
1. The Death of Herbert West

"What do you want to happen, West, you know, when you die?" Daniel had asked him at the beginning of all this, two years ago, after the first few incidents. "What do you want?"

Daniel admits he doesn't have the best memory, he thanks whatever God there may be for Cell Phone Alerts or else he'd never remember what days he's reserved for Meg. Somehow though he has some sort of encyclopedic memory when it came to medicine. However, not the best memory in general, but he can distinctly remember that night, he asked Herbert West what he wanted to happen when he died. He was sitting on the stairs that led into the basement, also known as the Lab, also known as West's room. He didn't like going directly down there any more at the time, especially then when West had somehow obtained two John Does, and Daniel wasn't about to ask where he got them. Stuff happened like that, bodies would just somehow appear down there. Up on the stairs Daniel could see over West's shoulder to see he was sewing an arm and leg together in some kind of twisted God-like humor. It was so long ago, but he remembers it so clearly.

Back then it didn't seem like this would happen. It's hard for kids like them, young as they are at the ripe ages of early twenties, it's hard to understand death, even if Daniel was a doctor and he saw it everyday, somehow it was beyond him still. He could hold the hand of a patient and feel their last heart beat but he still could not get a grasp of it all, this death, this inevitable and terrible thing. Even after all Daniel had seen up to that point, surviving two of West's experiments gone out of control. After nearly dying himself, and bring bodies back from death, he still could not get it. Daniel feared however, that Herbert West understood it perfect and better than anyone else in the world. Still, this didn't feel real. He didn't think it would really happen. Even as he had nightmares about it, he didn't think it would come to this. He didn't think he was really going to die from all this.

But he played with the idea.

"This does not apply to me." West replied that night, without even looking at him. "I am never going to die."

That night, Daniel laughed at him.

"But, West…face it, you don't live the safest of lifestyles…" Daniel told him.

Daniel never thought this would happen to him. He didn't think that this night would be the night he'd have to kick the jaw off a Re-animated corpse bent on his destruction. He didn't think the upper body of a Re-animated woman would be holding down his arm to the wall, or that her lower half would be wrapping it's legs around his waist. He didn't think he'd be screaming at bodies that could barely function, but somehow seemed to want him dead.

He didn't know West had made this many, enough to fill up a whole cemetery tunnel. He didn't know West worked that fast. He didn't know West had made so much formula. He didn't know where on Earth West could have gotten these many bodies. It was that thought that made him tremble the most, what on Earth could he had done to get these many?

A corpse that was two halves of two people sewn together grabbed him, and he could see West even in the dark fighting his way through his own creations. West was such a strange boy. He was short and weakly looking, pale from lack of exposure to the sun, and yet in times like these he could get through a whole army of bodies that could not process pain. Daniel watched as West jumped off the shoulders of a body and onto the nearby ground, running towards Daniel. Daniel smiled, maybe this was the night they were going to live, maybe he could get out of this alive and drive his way to Meg and hold her for the rest of the night and promise her, never again. Maybe this would be the last straw, maybe this would make West stop. Daniel again trembled at the thought of what made West do all this, what made him never stop? This thought did not matter at the moment however, since he was already making a plan of how to escape once West got over to him.

But then West fell over, and for the first time, he screamed.

He really did scream. In all those years, he had never screamed. Not from surprise, not from fear, he never screamed. He was not afraid of these creations, no matter how dangerous they were, he saw himself as their God and creator, and Gods do not fear their creations. Gods never die. Herbert West was never afraid, ever. But Daniel heard him, and for a moment he was not sure that was even West's scream, he thought perhaps it was a corpse. But he saw West's mouth open in agony and watched as he writhed on the cold ground. A woman had grabbed his leg, and bitten deep into it.

"…you don't live the safest of lifestyles." Daniel had said all those years ago. "If something were to happen…"

"Nothing will happen." West had told him that night.

"But if something did."

Herbert West never acknowledged his own death. Daniel found that West really did think he was never going to die. That he was going to perfect this serum, and he was going to become immortal, eternal. Daniel would admit he didn't know what to think, to believe West was going to do it, or fail. He felt that he should give West at least a chance, he did not stay optimistic about it, he simply allowed West the space and occasional aid to try. It was worth it, Daniel thought. All this dying, the smell of death, all those flies in the house, and all that grave robbing they had done, even if West failed, it would be worth it. The work would survive him, someday it would be perfected, it would all be worth it.

Daniel had chosen to ignore West's increasingly sick humor in his own creations, or how he had stopped coming to most of his classes, or his rounds, or how he had stopped coming up for food, or bathing, or really anything. He thought that sooner or later West would succeed or fail, and West would come out of that basement and smile, and ask for some pizza.

West never ate pizza.

"If something did happen." Daniel had asked that night.

"But nothing will, I have this under control."

"Well if I happen to die, don't you dare touch my corpse. I want to be burnt just so you're not even tempted. Give the ashes to Meg."

West had shuddered every time he spoke Meg's name, that woman, that annoyance, though West found every woman an annoyance, every distraction to be exiled from his life. West only wanted to work. West only wanted to find the dead, cut them up, bring them back, and kill them again. He had stopped coming up from the basement for dinner. Daniel would leave a plate by the door, but it was never anything good, West was the cook in that house. Daniel had ignored West becoming increasingly distant, he thought it would go away, he thought it'd just be a phase, that perhaps he was gone because he was no the verge of a break through. Daniel ignored how sick West looked the once in a while he got to see him, how pale, how thin, how weak, how inhuman. West even stopped washing the blood off his hands for a time there, saying he wanted to see the blood, he wanted it to remind him that he had still failed, that there was still work to return to.

Daniel ignored how West would drag himself down those stairs.

Daniel ignored the screams of the dead coming back.

He just waited.

And now years later, Daniel watched as Herbert West began to die. West kicked the woman that was chewing at his leg, and began to rise. He got on his feet, took a step, and fell over pathetically, not realizing how injured he was. He screamed as he hit the floor, and grabbed his leg. He grind his teeth in pain and looked up at Daniel, before another creation jumped on him, grabbing him by the shoulders and pinning him down. Herbert West screamed for the second time in his life, and fear showed through his eyes as he looked to Daniel.

Daniel didn't know what to do. He pulled back his arm from the top-half woman and kicked away her bottom half, he jumped up to get loose of any others attempting to grab at him. Herbert West had blood coughed up from his insides. He spat into the creation that was currently screaming in his face, and got loose an arm and began searching for a gun.

"Give the ashes to Meg." Daniel told him long ago, and West shuddered at her name. "Just humor me, West, what if you did die?"

West was silent for a moment that night, considering.

"You don't want to become a mindless zombie do you? Like these guys?" Daniel asked.

"They're not mindless zombies! They're progress!" West snapped at him that night.

West pulled out a gun from his lab coat, and shot the one on top of him in the head. The body rose up with the remnants of a skull and began flaying its arms around and running in circles like the chickens do. It was scary how long it kept at this, before it finally fell over and stopped. Herbert West attempted to rise shooting one of his creations that were at his legs again.

Daniel never thought this was going to happen. That he wasn't going to die like this. He was going to become a doctor, he was going to save lives. He was going to be the friend of the man who destroyed death, Herbert West, he was going to stand with him as they revealed what they had done, of course not including some of the minor details. He was going to marry Meg, and they were going to have children, and they were going to be happy, and he was going to be the dad he never had. That was going to be his life, not this. Not dying by the hands of dead people. This wasn't supposed to happen, West wasn't going to let this happen.

He never understood West. He never could comprehend what would make someone do all this. What would make someone go and dig up graves, sew them together, and bring them back. He wondered if West had lost someone close to him, or if he simply came close to death and feared it. He had once asked, but West yelled at him, and made him promise to never bring up the subject again. He called West Dr. Frankenstein from then on, but West did not understand the sick joke, since West had denied himself everything that made him human. West did not indulge himself in any way. He did not watch television, he did not see movies, he did not read books, or eat anything that was not unhealthy. He did not even look at art, or pictures of the world. He denied himself these things, explaining that all that he had not seen was a reward he would give himself upon succeeding. This scared Daniel sometimes, and he'd try to explain what Star Wars or Spider-man were, but West would stop him.

This was the most human Daniel had ever seen West. Lying there among the dead, screaming, fear in those cold and numb eyes for once. Fear he had had so many times, finally in the eyes of West. There was panic coming then, the coming realization of how grim the situation was on West's face. It was like he knew there was a way to get out of this, he just could think of it yet. It was there, but out of his reach. He could live, he knew he could. He just had to think of it.

Daniel was pushed back to the wall by a woman made up of three other women. The panic matched in his eyes as West looked over him. West began to have tears fill up his eyes, and Daniel knew they were going to die. But West pointed the gun at Daniel, and Daniel could swear he heard West say "I'm sorry."

"They're progress!" West told him so long ago.

"All right, they're progress!" Daniel said. "But what, what would you like?" Daniel persisted that night.

And West looked at him, and thought.

"Bring me back, Daniel." He told him, that night, with all the seriousness of the world in his face. "Don't let me stay dead."

Herbert pointed the gun at Daniel, and he fired, killing the woman that held him down. West then turned back to the creatures that were on top of him, and fired again, making enough of them get away so that he could stand. But another came at him, and he punched it in the face. Daniel ran towards him, but West stopped him.

"RUN!" West yelled at him.

Daniel stopped, and West had to shoot an approaching body that was coming at him from behind.

"RUN DAMN IT!" West told him.

Daniel still did not move.

"RUN OR I'LL SHOOT YOU!" West pointed the gun at him.

And Daniel knew, because West was just so stubborn, he would have done it. Daniel turned to the light at the end of this cemetery tunnel, and ran for it. He passed some bodies that saw that as soon as he was out of reach, they lost interest in him, all of them turning to West, the creator, the tormentor, the uncaring God.

The cave walls began to shake, and Daniel knew this was all going to fall over. He stood at the open entrance to the cave and looked down, preparing to see West run over and join him just in time. So that they could laugh and drive to Megs where it was safe, and never speak of this again, and never even try again, hand whatever research they had left over to higher powers.

That this would all be over.

And Daniel waited, feeling the ground shake, waiting for Herbert West, the man who could not die.

"Don't let me stay dead." Herbert West had told him that night.

"But, West…"

"You bring me back, Daniel, don't you dare let me be dead!"

And Daniel stood there, and waited, not even paying attention to the cuts and bites, and bruises all over him, the smell of death that had smeared onto his remaining clothes. He panted and waited, not even doubting for a moment the next few seconds he was going to West.

He watched and he heard gunfire, primitive roars, and West's new formed screaming, and finally the ground began to shake, and it began to cave in. But Daniel still waited.

The ends of the cave went down, and soon Daniel saw West limping as fast as he could up to the stairs, blood squirting out of his bite wound whenever he put weight on that leg. He had pain and exhaustion on his face, his glasses were gone, the tears had mixed with blood and sweat, but he was coming. He was up the stairs and but a few feet from the surface.

Then the hole was gone, and the ground had collapsed over him.

Daniel stood, unbelieving.

Then he screamed and went to his knees, digging into the ground with his bare hands.

"WEST!" Daniel screamed into the soft dirt. "Oh, God, WEST!"

He dug up a limp hand, and then soon a face and body that had flattened horizontally from the crashing weight. West looked peaceful for the first time, as if in the best sleep of his life. He was limp, and Daniel found no heart beat. He breathed into his lungs, but to no avail. Herbert West was dead.

"Don't you dare let me be dead!" Herbert West had told him.

And Daniel sat over the body of his friend, and saw something glowing beneath Herbert's collar. He dug and saw that West had kept a syringe full of his glowing green serum as a necklace. Daniel knew it was just a precaution, Herbert was obsessive like that. And he took a moment to look at the dead body of Herbert West, and questioned whether he should do it. Herbert's theories that maybe if he just got a fresh body, one just moments after death it'd be okay, it'd be perfect, but they found minutes were too long, but here, here West had just died for a second.

He reached into West's clothes and grabbed the gun just in case.

Then he lifted West's head and stabbed the syringe into the brain stem like West had taught him all those years ago.

Daniel stood, and backed away, and pointed the gun just in case. Ready to shoot and run, and drive to Meg, and hold her, and promise her never again, and ask her to marry him, and to get married, have kids, become a doctor, and be happy, and occasionally visit the grave of the late Herbert West.

"Herbert…?" Daniel asked.

The body remained motionless for a moment, longer than anything Daniel had witnessed, then again he hadn't witness this for a while now. He stood, almost sure the serum didn't work in the least at that point, perhaps a new formula was made and never tested.

But then the eyes opened, and a small breath entered those lungs.

Herbert West looked up at Daniel and squinted, needing glasses.

----------------

Next Chapter coming soon, depending on reception.

The story has only begun, for now West shall see why his serum only worked on him, and shall return to his roots to meet a father and perhaps a form of a mother, and Daniel and Meg shall be tested. The line of life and death will further blur, and what will be put to question is what is human, what makes one human, and can something inhuman be more human than a human?


	2. The ReAnimation of Herbert West

He could hear humming and the lips parted to form words and the sound vibrated in waves outwards from its source and entered his ears, ringing his ear drum into a manner of which his brain could interpret, and his mind could enjoy. It was a lullaby that was meant for only him, as if there was no one else in the world, and each note specifically plucked down from genius for him. Music, lullabies, it stimulates the brain, something calming to it, something satisfying to it. He had not known this satisfaction but heard of it from the books he read all his life. Such lovely noises he had not meant for himself, he had not allowed himself. But in those moments, to this lullaby, did he feel he was powerless to not enjoy what was being vocalized towards him. Even Herbert West could recognize that the gentle voice singing was indeed gentle and was filled with love.

There was warmth, and there was beauty, and there was love.

"Mother…" He said.

"What?" Daniel asked, trying to get him up.

Herbert West could not stand upon Re-animation. He laid on the ground, the serum reminding the body that it had to live, and the brain had to remind the organs how to function, remind the lungs to take in air, and the heart to beat, and the blood to flow. He had to remind himself how to think, and how to process what he saw before him after his eyes had remembered how to see. He laid there, and the lungs coughed up carbon dioxide that had collected within them at death, and some excess blood in his mouth was released as well. The body could not remember how to move, the muscles did not know which should contract and when, and when Daniel stood him up, the knees knew not to remain in place, and they buckled under the weight.

Daniel was forced to carry the limp and recovering Herbert West, the frail body that Daniel would have guessed weighed around one hundred pounds. He ran in the shadows so no one would see them as they ran across the cemetery and through the hole in the fence into their back yard that Herbert and sawed.

They had escaped before the authorities came, made it home across the street before the police came. They didn't do much, they were replying to a complaint of noise by the neighbors from the cemetery, the police blamed stupid teenagers and didn't even come to question Daniel.

Daniel was left with the body and mind of Herbert West remembering how it was to be alive. Daniel took West to his bed, since Herbert really didn't have a bed in his basement, but padding that he used to relieve exhaustion. He laid him on the bed and wrapped him in blankets and got him water, and he didn't know what to do. There was no medical procedure, there was no book or teacher that taught him the way to treat a patient who was once dead but now alive.

Herbert spent the next four hours into the night heaving, having difficulty breathing. Daniel tested his heart, which was at the time in an erratic pace, not getting that steady bump-bump rhythm yet. Daniel shined a light into Herbert's eyes, and watched as the pupils shrank and the eyes quivered, and they looked up at Daniel with life in them, and thought behind them. Green eyes with brown around the black pupil, alive.

"Herbert?" Daniel asked. "Can you hear me?"

The eyes quivered and watched as Daniel lifted away, and the feet kicked the mattress in response, and the arms moved up with limp hands but clenching fingers, and waved around unsure of their destination, and out came the sound of escaping air from his mouth.

"Are you in pain, Herbert?"

The eyes widened and somehow Herbert was able to give a look of utter obviousness and Daniel didn't know what more he could.

"What do I do, Herbert? What am I supposed to do?"

This had never happened before. Re-animated bodies are merely bodies who can move, the brain has no higher thought, no control over its actions. Memories may be remaining but there is nothing left of the dead tissue to really form a mind. Instead all the creations Daniel had witnessed came back screaming and moving in an instance in sheer pain. No one had ever done this. No one had ever shown signs of higher thought, and no one was slow in motor skills as this.

Herbert West's eyes moved in panic, and the arms went up into the air, and the legs kicked at the blanket they were wrapped up in. He twisted and turned, but unable to speak.

"Stop! Stop it!" Daniel grabbed his arms and pinned him down, afraid Herbert was slowly becoming like one of his creations.

So Daniel turned on the light, and he stood right above Herbert, and he looked into those eyes, and he made sure they stayed alive, that they remained their thought within them. He stood and watched, making sure Herbert would not degenerate further into those mindless zombies he made.

"Herbert look at me." He told him. "Now look at the hole in my ceiling. Now look at the spider-web in the corner. Now look at my bookcase. Now look at my window. Now me again."

This exercise began to calm the body, and the kicking ceased, and the arms rested on the mattress, his hands clenching on the blanket. Daniel was engaging the brain, keeping it going, like an Alzheimer's patient, like a person with a degenerating brain disease. He kept the brain working, making it fire up electrons that send electrical impulses through each corner of its surface, hoping that it was in some way helping.

"Look at the door, look at the creak of light. Look at the lamp. Look at the ceiling. Look at me. Look at your hand."

And Daniel continued this for a full hour without stopping. Until finally it seemed Herbert was breathing at a steady pace, and the heartbeat had returned to rhythm.

"Okay. Good, Herbert, you're doing great. I think you did it, man, I think you came back from death." Daniel smiled. "And what the hell were those things, Herbert! What in God's name were those things!" Daniel yelled.

To this Herbert opened his mouth, and a sound came out, a reply but not in the form of words.

"It's okay, you did it, you don't have to do it ever again." Daniel spoke hopefully knowing this was probably not true.

Then Daniel sat down on a chair next to the bed, and rested his head on his hands. He wiped his tired eyes, and realized he was still covered in his blood, Herbert's blood, and God knows who else's blood. He was realizing how tired he was, and how much those bruises and cuts were hurting. He sighed and saw that Herbert was looking at him. Daniel stared.

And with great anticipation did he really get it. Herbert West died, and now he lived again. Daniel isn't the most religious person in the world, but the course of 2,000 years of a society of believers has instilled some sort of preconceived notion that there is a great Creator, an Uncaused Causer, an Unmoved Mover. And so did Daniel lean over to West.

"Where have you been?" Daniel asked.

Where did you go? What things did you see in death? Were you a soul that left us? Was there a heaven, was there a hell, was there a man named God who sits upon a royal and heavenly throne as Angels worship him and the Son sits beside him?

With great anticipation did Daniel lean his ear over to West's mouth, as it began to quiver and move.

"No where." West was able to lie, not even mentioning the sound of his mother's voice.

He couldn't even be sure it was hers, anyway.

--------------------

He counted the days. He counted the hours that he watched the sun hit their windows and leave them. He curled up in the scratchy gray blanket, completely wrapped up as if he were dead. He laid on his side, with his back to the room, with only his hair sprouting out from the blanket, and his eyes staring out towards the windows. His body felt ill. Like his individual limbs were stuck in their own fevers, each part seemed somehow separated from him, as if his body was alive without him. He found the process alarming as well as fascinating.

He died. He lives.

He breathes. In and out, in and out, in and out, the process has once again become a menial task that has been done many times before. Sometimes he thinks his heart stops, but he can't be sure on that one. He was almost numb to it really, the success, his accomplishment. He lingered on in his new found life completely in doubt. He walked on cautiously, that maybe, just maybe this was all a lie. Maybe he was dead, maybe this was an afterlife of sorts. Or maybe it just didn't work, maybe he would slowly die, perhaps his life span was cut in half, or doubled. He didn't know.

And at the time he didn't care to know. His head was throbbing with each push of his blood, the fevers came and went, and he smelled like sick. He hadn't eaten since that night, occasionally he'd drag himself to the bathroom for a bath of cold water, cold so he could feel like something that was alive. Herbert West preferred the cold anyway, it was one of the few things he had actually formed an opinion about in his lifetime. The nerves that sense cold were deeper within the epidermis surface of the skin than that of warm nerves, it took more cold to be felt by the person, if he could feel cold it was a sign that yes, he was alive. Not to mention they helped with the fevers.

He had attempted to keep a log by writing in his notes, but he found that he was unable to keep his hands steady to make the words. He found this very displeasing, and Daniel left his laptop to let Herbert type up what he wanted to say, but Herbert had not allowed himself to come in contact with a computer and he wasn't about to slowly type out letter by letter what he wanted when he couldn't even keep his fingers from shaking. He decided to rely on his memory, which he figured would work out because he needed to strengthen his memory anyway. That's all he had to keep doing, keep reminding himself how to do things, so that the body and mind could fall into a regular system again. That's all he had to do. He reminded himself, that's all you have to do.

But it was not this that was bothering him. It was not this re-processing of everything, this learning of everything all over again. This was expected, this was what he meant to happen all along. No, he found none of this scary, except for the fact, that is should not have worked.

He shouldn't be alive.

Daniel would remind him too, each day when he left for the hospital, he told him, and wrote it down on numerous notes. Herbert found himself somewhat incapable of thought, something just told him, this was not how it used to be, the mind was not so quiet before, his hands did not always shake, he was able to stand on his own two feet.

Daniel was worried each day that he went to sleep or woke or left for the hospital that he would return to a dead Herbert on the floor. At the time Herbert was not very responsive and like children with autism could not keep a conversation going or respond to his own name after several tries. He was very reclusive and often found that he was just lying there from the previous night.

It was morning then, and Herbert was watching the sun rise up over the window and through the terrible excuses for drapes, the light shining through the thin fabric into his eyes. He could hear Daniel in the other room scrambling to get dressed while cooking some food, and he could smell the burnt pancakes even then. Daniel looked in on Herbert through the kitchen and hurried to set the food down.

"I've been cleaning up the basement in case anyone would show up and ask anything. I've done the best I can. Here, I'm sorry I burnt your breakfast again." Daniel says as he sets the food on the coffee table by the couch Herbert lied on. "I…I've explained to Dr. Hill you were in a pretty bad car accident where your…brother died. So just go with that okay? You've missed a lot of days as it is, I don't think anything less than that would have convinced him."

Daniel pauses.

"Herbert? West, can you hear me?"

And do Daniel's fears Herbert West does not respond.

"Herbert!" Daniel yells so he can hear.

"Dan…"

Daniel's eyes widen not expecting an actual verbal reply. Daniel goes to his knees to the arm of the couch and moves to face Herbert.

"Yeah?" Daniel asks.

"It shouldn't have worked."

"What you talking about?"

Herbert West looked annoyed that he was being forced to repeat himself.

"I didn't do anything to the formula. I haven't touched it in months." Herbert said.

That was the most words he had said at one time, which made him extremely tired after saying them. He sunk his head deeper in the pillow of the armrest and gave a heavy sigh of accomplishment, which caused him to cough, and for Daniel to have a worried look.

"But it worked!" Daniel said.

"But it shouldn't have." Herbert coughed. "I didn't do anything, people came back as failures…"

"What does that mean?"

"Something's in me…" Herbert hit his chest, and barely felt it. "Something in me made it do this. It wasn't my formula, it was the constant, I was the changing….changing variable." Herbert's words began to slur at the end of that sentence.

Daniel couldn't tell but this made Herbert very afraid, the only thing Herbert was really able to emote at the time was his exhaustion. But he was afraid. He was afraid, because he hadn't touched the formula as he said in months. He hadn't had enough subjects to pinpoint another way to better it. So if it was not the formula that had made him the only success in all these years, it must have been him. He couldn't even begin to guess what it was at the time, a hormone at the time, the plasma in his blood, something genetic, right down into his DNA. What could it have been, that the hundreds of other people he had tested did not have? He began going over his medical books that were locked away in his head and he had to remember again what they said. He was thinking of every chemical the body released within itself that may have tampered with the serum to create the wanted effect of life. But he couldn't think of anything, nothing biological that could have mixed with his artificial formula. He couldn't think of anything at all, and this made him more afraid. He feared he was an anomaly an estranged bi-product of something else. Perhaps there was radiation that his formula had been contaminating him with all these years. Perhaps it was something worst, something genetically, ultimately wrong with him.

"You mean…genetically?" Daniel asked.

Herbert smiled at how similarly the two of them thought, and slowly nodded. Daniel's eyes moved in a panic but then stopped and sighed.

"Maybe we shouldn't question such a good thing, Herbert. Maybe we should, you should for once let it go." Daniel said.

Herbert weakly shook his head.

"How incomplete of me…" Herbert whispered.

Daniel laid on his knees before Herbert West, the man who died and came back, who now could barely stay awake from exhaustion, who was barely breathing, who was shaking from fevers at that very moment. Who was not telling him that there was something terribly wrong. Daniel lowered his head.

"Look, I'll stay today, but I got to stay at the hospital for the rest of the week, because…" Daniel bit his lip.

"Because of what?" Herbert opened his eyes.

"Look, I was planning to visit my family, I had it all arranged, and then…this happened. It'd be unlike me to just back out now, and I was thinking, Meg is coming, she's going to meet the family for the first time, I was thinking I would have to take you too." Daniel said.

Herbert gave a look of familiar disdain.

"How irresponsible." Herbert sighed. "Do I look like I can go anywhere?"

"We'll tell them you came down with something on the way." Daniel said flatly, knowing how stupid it all sounded, but showing he had been thinking about it. "It's a big house, there's plenty of empty rooms for you to stay in."

Herbert got the strength to turn around, and turn his back to Daniel. Daniel simply placed himself in front of West again, and frowned at him.

"Did you tell her?" Herbert asked.

"Tell her what?"

"This." Herbert sounded annoyed.

"I left out some details."

Herbert smiled, and nodded.

Daniel had been telling Meg what had been happening after their first experiment went awry and she was kidnapped by several corpses. Meg was studying to be an author, and it was she who originally made the connection between West and Dr. Frankenstein. Daniel had to lie to her most of the time about the extent of which West worked, but like Daniel the idea of saving lives was worth what West was doing, especially when Daniel told her West was studying along side a team in Europe before he had returned to the States, that everything was safe, the corpses were just a one time thing, an experiment where West got over ambitious, an atrocity acknowledged by even West. But Meg was not stupid, she didn't believe Daniel all the time, but like Daniel she kept her mouth shut about the whole thing. Just waiting until it was done, until Daniel was a doctor, and they could move away, and leave Herbert West, at least in her mind.

She had never really spoken to Herbert West, and their brief encounter together as he was cutting up corpses that were holding hostage in a manner was enough to make her never want to see him again. Though that one meeting was enough to have the both of them afraid of the other. West afraid of her as the distraction to Daniel, and she afraid that West was going to be the thing that killed Daniel.

After all Meg was this close to moving in with Daniel when West showed up with a crumpled up paper that said "Room mate wanted" in Daniel's handwriting. It was Herbert West who prevented her from even stepping foot into that house. It was Daniel who had to drive up to her apartment, it was Daniel who slept over for days on end, just because she didn't want him going back to that place, with that strange boy who plays with death.

"I was thinking…it'd be good for you, Herbert." Daniel said. "I was going to ask you to come along before all this, even though I know you would have said no. Family time doesn't really strike me as your thing."

Daniel smiled at his small joke, but Herbert West only frowned, and seemed to sink into a deeper depressed look.

"You'll love my family." Daniel said, unsure if West had ever loved anything, "I have one brother, and two sisters, and I'm the oldest. My sister is about to go off to NYU, and the younger ones are about fifteen. My mom has re-married to my step-dad, he's a psychologist, and my mom's an accountant, together they've bought a pretty good house. My mom cooks, but from what I hear my brother's been cooking for a while, home meals, Herbert, home freaking meals." Daniel smiled.

But Herbert looked not amused as he looked up at Daniel, but Daniel felt this was out of his exhaustion and not uncaring. Daniel looked at West, a man who had died and come back, and he knew it wasn't right, but he was going to leave it. Really, he wasn't going to investigate it, and was working quickly to change the subject to his family, hoping he could actually do that with West in his current state.

"They sound lovely." Herbert remarked after his blank expression.

"They are…I haven't seen them in a long time too…And I have to get Meg approved and all." Daniel smiled.

"We will be returning soon…" Herbert tried. "I must…I must look further." He raised his hand and looked at it, referring to his self, and why he lived.

"Yes, of course…" Daniel sounded defeated.

"If I know how I lived….I can replicate it."

"I'm sure you can." Daniel trailed off.

And silence fell between the two.

"I love her, West." Daniel said. "Do you understand that?"

Herbert West raised his shoulders and shrugged.

"She's coming today, you know. To see you, to talk about our trip."

Herbert West, the man who cannot die, merely nodded.

-------------------

Herbert West, after a few hours of sleeping, was able to find the strength to sit up on the couch for the first time. He sat there and watched Daniel move from room to room, packing for the two of them this lovely and fine trip to the family. Herbert didn't know what to think of it really, He saw it as mere recovering time more than anything else, as even he was certain that he would need some sort of surveillance over him, so he wouldn't choke to death in his own sleep or something. He felt some sort of small excitement in seeing where it was Daniel came from, as he was very invested in genetics. He was however hesitant to leave his work and this house, as he had not been in many places all his life. Home, Switzerland, here, that was it, and he would have liked to have kept it that way until he perfected his formula. He felt a small fear that someone was going to take it, so he instructed Daniel to pack everything he could up to take with them, knowing full well it was quite a paranoid thought.

They were to leave in five days, Herbert felt it would be enough time for him to at least be able to stay awake for a full complete day. Meg was just about to arrive, and Herbert had yet to form an opinion on Meg. Herbert didn't form opinions about things generally, then he knew he would have anger for when things he didn't like came. Meg was annoyance, just as television, and such were annoyances. He didn't particularly hate her, he understood other people needed other people, Daniel needed Meg. That is why Herbert would never complain when Daniel would leave for gaps of a few days, people were social things, with the exception of Herbert West who had rather trained himself out of this instinct for the time being in order to follow his work.

Because at that time, him coming back from the dead was not a success, not yet, not before he could find out if it really worked.

Daniel was packing his own clothing in front of West. Then the mail dropped in from the door slot, and Daniel lied on his back and reached for it, sitting back up and scooting towards Herbert. He went though the letters, and then stopped and handed one to West.

"Here's one for you." Daniel said.

It took West a moment to process this and then he shook his head.

"I can't read." Herbert told him, and motioned for him to read it.

Daniel opened it and began reading aloud.

"Dear Herbert West, it is regrettable that we of Hillside County," Daniel stopped "That's near where I live," Daniel nodded and continued. "It is regrettable that we of Hillside County are forced to tell you that your father…Bruce Abbot has died." Daniel stopped.

He looked to West with distress, but West gave no sign of pain. West misinterpreted Daniel's look as confusion and instead of giving comfort attempted to explain.

"West was my mother's name." Herbert explained.

Daniel paused and continued.

"We have attempted to contact you sooner, but your father was killed five years ago, with the murderer not yet found and brought to justice. It has taken this long for us to track you down, as we know you had left Hillside County before your father's murder. It was difficult for us to find you, but now we have, and are in need of a reply for you to claim your father's Will. Lawyers and representatives have told us that he left you all his possessions, including the house of which he resided. We will need a written reply or a personal one to claim these possessions within ninety days or they shall be put up for sale. Again we apologize for your loss…"

There was more of the usual government trying to sound compassionate within the letter but it was all the same nonsense, but Daniel didn't feel that he had to go on. He looked to West, who gave no sign of pain still. Daniel was afraid that at the time he was simply unable to due to his exhaustion, but even more so he was afraid that West didn't feel anything at all. He stared at West who returned the stare, as if waiting for Daniel to continue and finish up.

"Are you okay?" Daniel asked.

West nodded, with an obvious look on his face.

"Your Dad is dead, he was murdered." Daniel repeated, in case Herbert had not heard.

Herbert then looked to the floor, and leaned back in the couch.

"I know." Herbert West said.

And Daniel Cain stared. Herbert lowered his head, and gave a small smile of satisfaction.

--------------------

Next Chapter: Our Brother

In which we shall discover the family life of both Herbert West and Daniel Cain, and for the first time West shall see how a functioning family works and observe with a careful eye as they observe him, all before they set out to this hometown of West's and discover why it is that Herbert West lives.

I plugged in Bruce's name in here, you'll be seeing Jeffrey's name pop up soon too.


	3. Their Brother

Unknown to Daniel Cain that was not Herbert West's first time screaming. He had not come into this world screaming like most infants, he was not a baby that cried. He was born silent into this world, as if already knowing how disappointing life was going to be. He did not cry as a baby, not for food, or sleep, or attention, and for this he was feared to have some sort of disease, something that was genetically wrong with him that prevented him from the basic instinct of crying. No, the child that Herbert West was, was quit content with being silent, having found nothing amazing to say, and to the surprise of his doctors he developed speech as normally as other children without saying all that much.

But it would be at seven years old where he would first cry. Herbert as a child was not allowed much, his caretaker that was assigned as a parent in society did not give Herbert the liberty of toys or anything playful. Yet Herbert once found this puppy, this stray puppy in the woods that were the backyard. So he built this puppy a house, as he was good with his hands, to have in the woods, and he would go and venture out to feed it and play with it. But one time when the man he called Father followed him out into those woods to find out why Herbert had been smiling so much something terrible happened. To hide the puppy from his father Herbert ran with it, ran across the woods over to the hospital where he knew it was safe.

He ran out of those trees and onto the pavement the world had put over the grass, and looked over to see his companion. But the puppy had been run over, and was nothing more but a flat piece of red fur, resembling nothing of the puppy he had grown attachment to.

Then was the first time Herbert West cried and screamed, and it would be the last for a very long time.

Years later, Herbert West was on his way over the seas to Europe for schooling, after all his hardships, and his education, and the difficulty of standing out to European professors when growing up in such a small town. He had not told the man he called Father of his departure, nor did he really tell that man that he was going to be a doctor, and spent all his time at the hospital, and how the nurses liked him, and how he had helped in birthing many babies, and how he was a genius. And how he was experimenting on dead animals. So when finally he confronted that man, who still lied upstairs in that bed with bottles of alcohol on the floor, that he was leaving to better things, and he was never going to come back, that man was furious. How dare that boy even think of leaving, how dare that boy who doesn't even speak think he could at all amount to anything.

And so did the man he called Father hit him, and Herbert West fell down the stairs, to crawl back up this his knees, to get kicked in the stomach, and to roll over in pain. To listen to that man that he called Father tell him he was not going anywhere, that no good school would have accepted a meaningless thing like him. Finally did Herbert West get pushed into the backyard, and finally did he grab a shovel. Finally did Herbert West run screaming into the house, spitting out blood, and hitting that man in head. And so did that man he called Father fall over, and did Herbert West hit him again, and again, and again, until there was little of anything that resembled that man's face. There did Herbert West stand over that man who smelled of death and beer, and there did he wipe his face, and glasses, and went into the kitchen to wash his hands.

Then did he slowly walk upstairs to get his fallen bags, and walk down stairs over to the couch to lay out his small doctor's hand bag he had found in the basement of the hospital. Then did he open it up to reveal a green glow, and then did he prepare a syringe. So did he slowly walk to that man's body, cautious as if not sure he had really killed him, that maybe this was all a sick joke, a lapse in sanity, or something of the sort of a dream. So did Herbert West stand above that man with the syringe, and so did he tilt his head.

"Come see, Father, what your son has done." He had told that body.

Then without knowledge of how to properly do this, he stabbed it into the chest, and pushed that serum into the body, and stood back, grabbing the fallen shovel again. At this time his serum was but a mere prototype, the culmination of half his life at the age of seventeen back then. The serum was only to reanimate dead tissue for a limited amount of time, and there was absolutely no sign of any higher thinking like there is now.

The body of that man began to twitch and finally did that man's mouth open to unleash an inhuman scream created by the voice box simply having a spasm and without any knowledge of how to form words. Herbert West stood and watched the pathetic thing try and crawl, and fail, and fail, and fail. And finally did Herbert West put it out of its misery, and he hit it again with the shovel until the twitching ceased.

He killed that man he called Father, all to bring him back, just so he could kill him again.

------------------

Of course Herbert West had neglected to inform even the closest of his fellow human beings, the only one being Daniel Cain, of this moment in his lifetime. If all Herbert West had done could not be considered murder since they were already dead, that moment was murder, there was no getting around that. And Herbert West would not have denied it if anyone accused him. He would have said he was simply enacting justice, a cut off lifetime after the ruining of one's other life, a fair trade it seemed to West. What remnants of a social life West could have had even beside his work were destroyed by that man, and he was well aware of that. It was books that told him it was his father's beating that gave him an initial distrust of all people, with the exception of doctors and nurses, whom he had found refugee with.

Herbert West quite enjoyed giving himself a psychology test. He knew very well he had done incredible emotional damage to himself not only due to his father, but his determination to not expose himself to culture, even though it really was the one thing he really wanted. Yes, culture, more knowledge on people and what they've done, and what they do, and what they may do. The very idea of it sent a sensation he was unfamiliar with down his spine, it was something more than excitement, more than anticipation. Culture constantly changed itself for further observation that never was the same as before. It was something West had planned to spend eternity in investigating, once he got that whole, never going to die thing out of the way. He knew in denying himself of culture and human contact he was indeed destroying social skills, it was a wonder how he got along in this world with a companion like Daniel, who was so very bent on friendship, when it meant quite little to him. Herbert defined friendship through loyalty, as he had not yet experienced a simple fun night, loyalty was all he had to define it, and Daniel so far had shown immense loyalty to him, and it was fair that he returned the favor.

West understood he was not very human in that idea. But he figured that if he was going to live forever he would surely have enough time to build necessary social skills to enjoy other people after all his work.

West also understood he had a rather irrational trust towards Doctors and nurses. As in his past, he had found safety within the hospital, and it was through watching people in the emergency room that he first became fascinated with the idea of bringing things back to life, and in fact started with electricity instead of chemicals in his attempts. It was the nurses that gave him much of the knowledge on medicine he still retains, and they knew he could not afford medical school but knew he wanted to be a doctor, so many attempted to teach him the basics of injecting IV, and sewing stitches up, and so on. Of course the nurses could never have imagined what West toned these taught skills towards.

West also knew he very much enjoyed babies. He had aided in many births, and was quite fascinated with women in their ability to create and house life, when all this time he had been unable to with all his skills. But women, women were just made that way, they just did it. West quite loved babies at first birth, as in a sense they had just be animated for the first time, they came out crying, and wiggling, and grabbed onto anything they could feel from basic instinct. They knew not language and were untainted by abusive fathers or dead mothers at the time.

Daniel was still staring at him, still holding the letter.

"My father and I were not close, Dan." Herbert explained.

"Still…" Daniel folded up the letter.

"I hated him." Herbert injected. "I. Hated. Him, yes, I hated him, and I am glad he's dead." Herbert spoke rapidly.

Daniel didn't seem to understand this idea of hating one's relative, he seemed confused, but looked at West's tired face and decided to pursue it no further.

"We can drive up there after my family." Daniel offered. "It's not that far you know."

"I said." Herbert took in breath to speak. "I never want to go back."

Daniel didn't know what to say.

"Hey, you can get a house at least…" Daniel tried, and West seemed to consider. "A freaking house man, I'll take it if you don't, I hear that's a good place to settle down."

Daniel smiled and tried to make a joke out of this.

"We will go to claim the house." Herbert sighed.

And just then the door knocked and in stepped Megan. West in his current state had forgotten her appearance and was surprised to find her with her hair cut short and in a bun on the back of her head. She wore a black collar shirt and dark jeans, and was very lean and almost as tall as Daniel. She came in with her head lowered as she looked to the sick Herbert West before she ever looked at Daniel, a motion Herbert found very kind, and then she went to hug Daniel.

Daniel seemed more please to see her than she was, but Daniel was like that when living in a house where he could smell death on the walls. His affection made her laugh and she gave him a kiss on the forehead and cupped his face as if she was protecting him from something. She seemed loving, warm, holding Dan in a rather long embrace, and assurance that she was really here, and that no dead corpses could keep her from him. Dan finally turned to Herbert and laughed, and pushed Meg away, that's enough in a way he told her.

She gracefully walked away and sat on the couch opposite Herbert.

"I heard you were hurt." Meg said, and her eyes searched him up and down.

"Yes." Herbert said. "I died."

Meg's eyes widened, and she put her mouth her hands and stared at Herbert. She quickly turned to Dan who dodged her looks, and looked back to Herbert.

"I didn't know that part." She explained.

Herbert nodded.

"I came back." He said obviously. "Of course, I am not up to full strength and the causes are unknown, but I hope with further research soon I will be able to replicate it." He nodded, reminding himself more than telling Meg.

"I never…thought you would actually…" Meg trailed off. "I've been worried about it all. I never…I never agreed to this, I'm glad it's done with."

Meg looked to Daniel, not really believing the two of them had really done it at all, hence her lack of excitement.

"I know we haven't gotten along, West, but…" Meg was cut off.

"Gotten along? We've hardly begun to go along." Herbert said.

Meg stopped and nodded.

"Herbert's coming with us, he's too sick not to." Daniel told her, and she nodded again. "His father died recently."

"Not too recently." Herbert corrected.

"Oh, oh God, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." Meg began. "That must be terrible for you, I mean, you just…found out how to…"

"No." Herbert said. "I'm quite content with it."

There was an awkward silence that was not going to end for the seven days ahead of them, packing, preparing, driving and such, all up to Daniel's home.

Herbert West took those days to observe this Meg of which he was sure Daniel was going to devout his life to. The signs were already there, even one such as Herbert West who lacks these abilities to show off such signs were recognizable to him. Meg stayed with them those five days of preperation, and Herbert could hear their love making through the paper-thin walls, and how Daniel would kick the bedpost as whenever Herbert assumed she was on top. Herbert did not process this act as rude and not thoughtful towards him, as he was pretty sure they were unaware that he could hear them, and he saw that this was a natural act between two people such as Daniel and Meg. They apparently loved each other, and instinctive sexual drive brought them to it.

Meg knew how to cook, and for once Herbert West was eating non-burnt pancakes. He awoke to their discussions on their future that at times became heated debates on what was going to happen. What was there to move on from, what money could be made, what was to be the fate of Daniel with this man named Herbert West? He became quite fascinated with the mechanics of such a relationship, as a part of him looked forward to it, while another in the fit of old habits despised them for this. He watched as Meg would end conversations of anger with kisses and all would be forgiven, and he watched as she made her pathetic attempts to engage in conversation with West. He found her much more interesting to watch than to speak to, but that was the way he felt about everyone.

One night she stayed with him, while Daniel went to bed, he appreciated her attempts to become friendly as it were, but admitted in all truthfulness he was not in a state to form any sort of relationship. But there was one thing that struck a cord with him.

"He made this creature, and it called him father." She told him. "He only wanted to create life, he only wanted to be as God, and create something in his own image. He was horrified however, when it first came back." She nodded and he nodded. "So much so that he cast it out, afraid of it, and he forgot it, believing the world would destroy it itself, taking him completely out of it. But it followed him, and it taught itself, and it sought revenge upon its father for its creation. And so the creature, damned as it was, killed his father's family, and Dr. Victor Frankenstein chased the monster to both their deaths." She told him.

---------------------

It was the first time he was able to walk, getting up from the couch, blanket wrapped around himself, as he limped over towards the car for a two day trip to Daniel's home, and to his own. His legs somehow knew how to walk after their long rest, and he was able to get used to the feeling of the weight moving over his foot, and was able to get to the car with little trouble. It was morning and he could barely see, Daniel assured him he had his glasses and walked beside Herbert prepared to catch him. He heard Meg say something from behind him, but quickly locked the door. Daniel gave Herbert a briefcase of all the research accumulated over the years, and any free syringes left over, he gripped it before he completely let go.

"Don't tell her." Daniel said.

The she came in to the car, and the two switched driving occasionally, as Herbert got used to resting in the back seat, still wrapped up in a blanket. He tried not to look out the window, he didn't want to be exposed to the world just yet. The hours went by unchecked on the road, it did something to how he thought, as he hadn't really been in cars that much, and had no first hand experience driving one himself.

In fact it made him quite tired, and he slept most of the way.

"Hey, we're here."

Two floor house, white with red shutters a brown roof, and a huge tree that had been used by all the children of the neighborhood, bearing a swing and a tree house. A home Herbert West had not even seen in movies, because he had never seen a movie. It brought up the question, do most people live in such nice places?

------------------

Meg out of nervousness stayed beside West in a lying act of kindness, when really she just wanted Daniel to go into the house first, Herbert could tell from how she breathed this was true but felt no offence to it. The doors opened to love if such a thing were possible. Daniel stood in front a shower of smiles, and Herbert could hear the footsteps of children running down the stairs.

"Danny!?" He heard one of the sisters yell.

"Danny!" a brother indicated.

"Daniel, oh sweetheart come here!" A mother said.

A mother, and wonderful mother, with open arms that embraced her child. A mother who housed life within her now held that life once more. A mother, a woman of age, a wrinkled face but Herbert assumed good for her age, lean and healthy looking, dyed hair to hide the grays, the woman held Daniel and the siblings ran out to greet their long awaited brother. The younger ones cheered as they grabbed each arm of the brother, and the oldest sister came out to hold him after the mother, with a kiss and hug, and a step father could be seen in the hallway, greeting the boy with a hug of his own.

And Herbert suddenly grew very cold as Meg gripped his arm uncomfortably from her nervousness. She looked to him, and began to step forward, reminding him they had to go part take in this as well, but he did not want to, he would have rather stood and watched further, this happy family that seemed compelled to touch each other. She stepped forward with Herbert and Daniel turned to look at her.

"This is Meg, and my friend Herbert West." Daniel said, letting them into the noising hallway.

Herbert West had not experienced such sound levels apart from screaming dead people. But here, two young children were matching the level of dozens of dead in joy instead of pain. They giggled and screamed in joy as their brother had returned. Meg soon found that it was Herbert who had begun gripping onto her. The siblings pulled in Daniel into the living room and the two of them followed along with the rest of the family.

"Herbert's my doctor friend I wrote about." Daniel yelled over his sister and brother. "Okay you guys, I get it!" He turned to them, "I missed you too!" To this they giggled and shut each other up. "He caught something on the way here." Daniel walked over to the curled up Herbert, and upon Daniel's hit on the shoulder Herbert gave a fake cough that became a real one.

"Hello." Herbert said weakly, as if silenced by the giggling children.

The step father came in and turned on a brighter light so they could all see each other. With the light Herbert was able to see that the siblings were still in their pajamas and the older sister was dressed in all back and sat across from them on the floor, cross legged. The step father sat down on an opposite couch as the mother came in with cookies that caused the younger siblings to yell in joy.

"Hello, Herbert, Dan's told us a lot about you." She said.

"He has?" Herbert coughed out.

"Of course." Daniel shrugged.

The mother came close to hand each of them some cookies after the younger siblings had taken their share. Herbert West declined and she smiled at the three of them.

"And you're Meg!" Pointed the younger brother named Joseph.

"Yes I am." Meg finally spoke up.

"You're gonna marry my brother!" The younger sister named Carrie said.

"Carrie!" Daniel yelled at her.

To this the family laughed, and Herbert West stared at each one of their faces and watched, unbelieving, unsure if it was possible at all for so much joy to be held. Carrie jumped onto her older brother who grabbed her and flew her around the air, before gently putting her back to the ground and picking up Joseph.

And so this continued for an hour, this nonstop laughter as the mother and step father asked of Meg and Daniel, and at the end of this hour Herbert West could not stand it any longer. This joy, this happiness, those smile, the likes of which he had never seen, he finally excused himself from the company with the excuse of his illness. He noted the family patterns, the obedient siblings, the older sister sitting contently to herself, and the step-father who was obviously not blood related to any of these children before them except for the youngest boy, and how even he separate from them somehow enjoyed himself as any other. He noted how Daniel changed, how relaxed he seemed, the tension in his face was gone, the responsibilities he put on himself were for a time set aside. Those responsibilities of course including the guidance of Herbert West, and in it all there was some rejection felt by Herbert, as if they were somehow teasing him. But he dismissed this as mere paranoia.

To this the sister in black, about to go to NYU stood and followed him.

"I can take you to your room." She said, going up to the stairs. "You can take Daniel's old room."

He followed this sister, dressed in formal black wear as if at a funeral, with eyeliner, and black nails up those stairs. She opened the door to a neat bed with books of Daniel's still on the shelves. He pushed up his glasses and took in the room, adding it to Daniel's file he kept in his brain.

He saw a cross with a sculpture of a Savior on the wall, to which he walked to and took from the wall and looked at. Wondering why it was that people worshiped a God and looked upon him in his worst moments. He considered what a strange thing it would be to re-animate this Messiah, how he would laugh at it all, and how in a way it would make him greater than this God. Hubris, thought Herbert West, but he allowed it, for he like this God and died and come back.

He turned to the girl, and wondered, if only they knew.

"Thank you." He said.

"That's my mom's." The girl said. "Please don't."

Herbert West with gently hands of a surgeon placed the piece back up to the wall.

"I don't believe it, but it's for her, you know?" The girl continued.

"I see."

"You don't look very sick." She said. "If it's the family, I know how you feel." She smiled. "You're the experimental surgeon right?"

"Yes…I suppose I am." He nodded.

"Do you want to watch a movie?" She asked.

"I don't watch movies."

"None?"

He shook his head.

"You're lying." She laughed.

To this he did not laugh but walked into Daniel's room to find a small television on a bare desk, the room was cold, no one slept there since he left, as if waiting for his return no matter how far they were between each other. He sat on the bed, and the sister came in.

"How's Dan?" She asked. "I mean, really."

"What do you mean?" He asked.

"He's been acting weird these last couple years…Everyone else ignores it, but I hear it, in his voice, in his e-mails. Something's disturbed him, it makes him write and speak more vaguely. Is it Meg?"

"No."

"Well what is it?"

Herbert West looked at this sister.

"Me." He said plainly.

She seemed confused by this.

"He is all right." He said before she could ask. "He is strong, he will get through this."

"Wait, what? Is he gay?" She looked strangely at him.

"I lack a sexual orientation, so even if he were, it is not with me." Herbert West said, now wanting this girl to go away. He looked at her coldly in a manner where he knew he was staring at her coldly.

"I'm just trying to look out for my brother, I'm sorry." She lowered her head.

"Why?" Herbert West asked.

"What? Cause he's my brother." She smiled.

Herbert West found he was not going to get a straight answer from this girl.

"…What's wrong with him?" She asked again. 

"He cares too much."

"Excuse me?"

"About patients. He looses them and feels personally responsible for it, even when there was nothing at all he could have done."

"Oh." She sighed. "Come on, I got a good movie collection." She smiled. "Evil Dead?" She asked innocently.

She ran and got it and started it for him, while walking down to rejoin the family.

He raised it to full volume, and still found the sound insufficient for drowning out the laughter he could still hear coming from downstairs. He almost sickened him that was what a family was truly like. It was far more enchanting than he had anticipated. And for the first time, as he laid down, and began feeling rather light-headed in the moonlight, he wondered what he had missed all these years.

When he finally went to sleep he could still hear them, laughing, talking, loving each other to a degree he did not understand. He could hear the little siblings walking up the stairs and going by his door, asking their older brother if his friend was all right, and Daniel answering with a hushed yes.

---------------

Next Chapter: My House

In which the childhood of Herbert West shall be seen again, and those of the hospital will welcome his aged face, remarking on his childish features that have retained. Lives will be saved, and Meg shall explore the rooms she should not. And at the dead of night will Herbert see something or someone that is too much like himself, and the visitor will call upon him. (The Plot shall finally thicken).

Anyone ever read Army of Darkness vs. Re-Animator? It's a good read, I hear they're making a comic series for our dear old Herbert, can't wait you know.

Please R/R


	4. A Hospital Called Home

Daniel Cain would be home for a full two days of which he would eat home made food that not even Herbert's cuisine could match for it was made out of love and was made for him. He would go down to the field and play with his youngest sister and youngest brother. Their idea of play of course was toppling over the six foot two giant of a man that was their brother. Their efforts were at times fruitless as Daniel Cain had gotten used to the force of dead people clawing at him in last stitch movements of their half lives. When this would happen Meg would come running from behind and jump onto the back of her lover, and finally would the eldest brother whom they all miss fall, and allow the youngest of them to get their chance to take him down. And as Daniel began to speak with his step-father, the eldest sister would sit at the stairs in watch. And the Mother asked the eldest son of his teachings, of the things he had seen at school and when his residency was coming up, and how he was growing. And so did Daniel sometimes leave to play once more and take the kids to school, Meg was left with the Mother, and did they learn of each other's love for that man one called counterpart and the other son.

Herbert West all the while, finally getting the strength in his arms began to do push ups within his room under his sick guise to bring back his strength. He heard the laughter of Daniel and his entire family and he wished Daniel would come and ask him how he was. He wondered when he felt well for the first time since his rebirth if he should go down and talk to any of those people below him, but he felt not yet, not there, work was not yet finished, not enough knowledge was known. He felt there would be another time to try again. The Sister would come now and again to check in on him, the young girl, just a few years younger than her older brother, about to set out from this home. She was sweet Herbert decided, her intentions were good.

He woke up to that cross of that Messiah and there was something in him that was bothered by it.

"You can tell me anything you know." Said the Sister to the Brother. "Like old times. When Dad died."

"You have no idea." He told her.

And Daniel, tall as he was, leaned on his younger sister who was much shorter than he. On the roof near dusk he'd sit there with her each day, because they had done it all their lives together. He leaned there and he smiled like he knew something she didn't, which there was a lot of things he knew that she didn't, but she didn't know which thing he knew but she didn't know this time. He thought it was funny, that he knew the boundaries of life and death, and he wasn't going to tell her.

"I think I'm going to marry Meg." He told her, instead.

"That's cool." She said.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Cool."

"How's your Herbert friend?"

"I don't know. I never do."

"He seems…uh…"

"Exactly. He seems nothing."

And so did this happy family eventually part, with many goodbyes and a Mother's blessings. Meg was hugged and kissed and said goodbye to by this family, and Daniel was hardly let go. Herbert was told to come back next time feeling better. The brothers and sisters nearly cried at the parting of the loved one knowing they will be parted again by the sister. And the Sister with a heavy heart sighed and waved, and hoped for the best. She knew better than anyone there Daniel was keeping something from them all, something horrible, and dark, and she hoped wherever he was off to next he'd leave those things behind.

But somehow she knew that was not going to happen.

--------------------

They were heading north to where Herbert once lived and from where he once ran from. Daniel was surprised as Herbert was walking well again and was able to stay active for a day. It wasn't too far from Daniel's home, which he left with desires of returning. He found it funny they lived so close together.

"What if we bumped into each other?" Daniel mused. "I use to come up here for summer camp."

"Oh that'd be weird." Meg spoke up.

"I did not go to summer camp." Herbert told.

"Oh yeah, that's what I thought. In fact it'd be weird if you had." Daniel smiled.

The landscape hardly changed, the growing towns just became smaller, and the trees became thicker along with the hills larger. The horizon was becoming all too familiar for Herbert West who stared out the window, he found it rather unsettling but in the end ignored it.

No one mentioned his father, instead ask if there was anything to do at the town. Herbert dismissed their excitement and told that it was merely a town, nothing special about it. He said there were places to go eat, restaurants, movie theater, a mall complex, but nothing out of the normal and the standard. He finished by saying he didn't plan on staying that long anyway.

But by the early afternoon they finally came upon it, and Herbert West was most uncomfortable. He recognized with precise encounters places he had been, trees he had hidden behind to dissect animals, traps he had set to capture those said animals, and escape routes he had planned to get around that man he called Father. Finally Daniel was asking for directions to the specific house, wondering if they should perhaps go to the City Hall first to claim the house. Herbert only wanted to avoid the house for as long as possible and suggested the City Hall, where there was an hour of waiting and clearing of identity, and even so when they gave him the key to the house they claimed their business was not yet done and they will make an appointment with him perhaps some time later.

And even after that Herbert West did not want to go home.

They passed by the hospital, and Herbert West yelled at them to stop.

"It was my real home." He explained.

Herbert was silent and his motivations for coming to the hospital were unclear, but Daniel went with him, and Meg went with Daniel. Herbert walked in a faster pace than they and walked ahead of them in search of what he wanted.

The hospital had changed, he was proud to say it seemed up to date with the latest in facilities. He entered the hallways with ease and knew exactly where he was going. He went down into the Emergency Room, passing by closed doors knowing that he was once always welcomed. He passed by the familiar smell of this particular section of the hospital. The smell that was mixed with chaos and death. He knew this smell all to well, he knew death as if it were his lover, his Meg. He knew death's scent, and feel, her touch, and her stubbornness and bitterness. He felt her there, only slightly, as if she were asleep. He walked down the main hallway, hearing the phones ringing and all sorts of alarms that were new to him but he knew their meaning from his own residency. He was passed by, by people in rushes, hurrying along attempting to save lives just like he was. Their faces were not familiar to him then, not yet. He passed the dead and the dying, and the ones that wished they were dead, and the ones that only looked like they were dead. He saw those patients even behind those doors he knew them, the old, and the young, people in dire need of help, who may die.

In that moment he was suddenly reminded why he had started his work in the first place.

"Herbert?" Came a voice.

He turned to his side, and he knew the face. He had seen it a long time ago, when she was much younger, and shorter. She had grown, like he had since they had last seen each other. He could see now she was a doctor, like her mother. Her skin was fine and pale, a good and sweet color that required the smallest amount of make up. Her hair was long and probably the most blonde color he had seen. And her eyes, they were blue and green but centered around the pupil they were brown, a fascinating amount of color pigmintation that even he knew was quite lovely. Her name was Amanda Leary, and she was probably the only girl he ever talked to when he was a child. He knew her immediately, recognized that face even aged, he knew who she was. He doesn't forget faces.

She lowered her head, afraid she had made a mistake, but looked up at him nonetheless with her eyes alone.

"Is that you, Herbert?" She asked.

"Amanda." He nodded.

"Herbert!"

She smiled and quickly hugged him, too quickly for him to stop her. She wrapped her arms around his and he was within her grip and powerless. He did not force her off for he told himself, she was not a dead woman trying to kill him, she was just a confused girl. Though the sight of all this made Meg and Daniel laugh, and gave Daniel the greatest hope that perhaps he wasn't the first friend Herbert ever had.

Her hug ended and she still smiled up at him.

"What are you doing here?" She asked.

She barely recognized him physically, but she knew that strange stare that seemed to be there and not there, and seemed to see everything and nothing all at the same time. She knew those thick rimmed glasses, and that perfect stature. She knew that lack of a smile and a look of complete and utter focus.

"I am here to claim my house." He said.

"Oh!" She looked suddenly incredibly sad. "Your father, I'm so…I'm so sorry…"

He stopped her and didn't even give her an explanation, at the moment he had not come for her, she was nothing but a distraction then. He did not come for chit chat, small talk that Daniel and Meg constantly did. He nodded and began walking away.

"Are you a doctor now?" She asked, walking with him.

"Yes." He told her.

"I knew it, you went to Europe for that didn't you?"

He nodded to her.

"What was that like?" She asked him.

Herbert began walking faster and away from her, then suddenly her beeper began to ring, and she looked to her waist to read it. She looked up at him with disappointment. Then she smiled.

"Would you like to help me, Dr. West?"

---------------

He would have said no if it were anything but this. Even if it was a man about to die, he would not have helped, because he knew he would have failed. He would had said no to a brain surgery, to a mending of a broken bone. He would have said no to everything except this. He rushed in, quickly introduced Daniel to Amanda and told him what they were about to do.

Now he was between a woman's legs and she was screaming, breathing, and pushing. They dressed him up quickly in something sterile, the nurses there knew him immediately as Amanda had, he had the same face, perhaps only slightly aged, and they knew him, and trusted him. So he sat there, Daniel over his shoulder telling the woman to breath, and to push, and to think of the smile she was going to see on her newborn baby's face. Meg stood outside, with a smile on her face, proud of her lover.

Herbert did not say anything as he held his arms out ready to catch this new life. He had done this many times before in his past. The nurses knew him, they knew he'd come to them with bruises and cuts that he claimed were from his experiments, which only half were. They knew he wasn't getting the proper education to be a doctor as so they taught him as much as they could. He was fifteen when he first helped a newborn life come into this world, he was sixteen when he could do it all by himself. He was fascinated by birth, it was taking a sac, a bag of flesh and bone and somehow giving it life. It was amazing to him how at once was but a few cells big was actually new life. Life, life he sought so much for, there, within someone else, growing, preparing for the world. It seemed so logical that the life women passed onto their children could be somehow found, and even perhaps taken by the women for their own. He wondered in his own fantasy, if women could only become immortal by conceiving children then taking their own fetus' life. It was merely a musing idea, nothing more.

Herbert West loved birthing children, he loved bringing them out from their lifeless vessels into the world. If it was anything else he would have said no.

The head peaks out and then hands that cover the eyes, and he sets it in his hands and with that the life is out. The child instinctively grabs to whatever it can, looks up, and with a hit begins to cry.

Herbert West holds in his hands what could be debated as being purely life. He doubts a newborn has the practice to have thought, or self awareness, all they are, are bodies of life, and that is all.

And that is beautiful enough.

"It's a girl!" Daniel smiled, as the father cut the cord, and Herbert handed it to Daniel to take away.

The first moment was all that mattered for him.

And the nurses, their aged faces, he saw them then, the people he knew, the people he grew up with. The women and men who snuck him medical books and supplies, and taught him their definition of life and death, and how to avoid death and bring someone back from it through electrical shock. He knew them well, he was grateful to them, for they allowed him to progress severely in his work. He saw their faces and new their lives were coming to an end, for it had left their faces and their eyes, and they had entered the second end of their lives.

They smiled at him, and hugged him as if they really knew him, but they didn't. He knew all he was to them was that quiet young boy who was dedicated and curious and polite, and the boy that left them for Europe and better things. They didn't know, they didn't know, and yet they acted so much like they did. This was not the love he sought, not the same Daniel had with his family. This was false love, built on assumptions that they all had previous relationships with each other.

He didn't come for this.

But he smiled for them, because he knew this was normal. He congratulated the new mother, and looked upon the child for the last time.

He left before Amanda could say anything to him. She watched as he passed her and she attempted to speak up, to tell him not to go, not this time, not again. But she closed her mouth and watched as he took off his gown and bloody gloves and walked off.

Daniel introduced himself to everyone, as the friend of their Herbert West who they crafted into a fine doctor that was accepted overseas. He shook their hands and explained he met Herbert in college and now they were doing their residency together, and they asked what Herbert had done all these years, and Daniel replied he had saved many people lives. Daniel then asked where he had went, and they said he left, the lad always does that, quiet as a mouse, no one ever notices until he's already gone.

What a good boy.

"You knew Herbert?" Daniel smiled at Amanda as she had just finished watching Herbert leave.

"Oh…oh yeah, we were…" She laughs. "Well we knew each other. My mother would teach us how to be doctors." She looks to her mother, aged, and currently examining the newborn. "He was a really quiet kid." She said. "I had to do all the talking."

"I know." Daniel rolls his eyes.

"He's doing good?"

"Oh yeah, he's great."

Daniel smiles and she smiles.

"Do…do you know where he went?" Daniel asks.

She shakes her head.

Daniel walks out with sweet goodbyes and congratulations to the family. He goes to Meg and tells her he's going to get Herbert, that she could go wait in the car if she liked, she shakes her head and says she's going to go with him, because she's been waiting in the car metaphorically for too long. This was supposed to be over, they were supposed to be able to be together. So he smiled and held her hand.

"I think I know where he went." He said.

-----------------

Thirty-two. He counted thirty-two bodies. John Does, Men, Women, Children, he sat with them on an empty table that he could smell death on. They were covered but he knew the face of death all too well, and he knew what they looked like. He could smell how old they were in death, how long they had been down there, and he knew what those bodies would have looked like if he taken their covers from them. But he sat and looked over them as if they were about to move and bow to him, for he was like them, he died, and was reborn.

It reminded him he had died.

He sat and looked at them and pictured himself in their state, and he wondered, he wondered why it did not happen. He was thankful, but he just wondered why. He checked his hands and wondered if they were in a state of immortality if the serum had taken a permanent effect or if it was just a small revival. He did not know, he was going to find out, he was going to progress his work from there.

He was never going to end up here, with these people, within the morgue, at the bottom of the hospital where no one goes or no one thinks about.

He was never going to die. It was fact.

It was then he heard the door open, and he knew who it was, because he knew, he would know where he was. Daniel stepped with Meg who had her mouth covered from shock. She looked to Daniel and tugged on his arm, and he nodded, she stepped in after him.

Herbert looked over at Daniel from across the room and the aisles of dead, and Daniel slowly made his way over to him, looking mournfully at these complete strangers.

"Is this where you got the idea?" Daniel asked. "To bring back the dead?"

"Yes. I saw a man die when I was eight." Herbert told him. "Here in this hospital, I know the exact room, and he sat on this exact table in death. Suicide, he had jumped and broken his spinal cord, blood was flooding the brain, and it was too bruised to ever function properly." He says his voice distant. "I snuck in and I watched, in the panic no one noticed me. He did not give me the idea however, children always believe they are going to live forever."

Herbert looked up.

"But it is the first time I saw my enemy in action, defeat a man, and several doctors working faster than Dr. Hill even wishes." Herbert explained.

Daniel gave a grin.

"I got a taste of death, and it mocked me with its rather impressive entrance. It showed me how brittle we are, and how easily broken."

Daniel had met Herbert West a long time ago, back when he had no place to stay and he slept in the morgue among the dead. It was there Daniel offered his house to share, and all this began.

"Did you sleep down here too?" Daniel asked.

"In secret sometimes." Herbert nodded.

"I met Amanda."

"Her mother forced us to 'play' together. She did most of the playing I assure you." Herbert explained.

"She likes you."

"Does she?"

"Yeah."

"What a shame for her."

"Aw come on, Herbert you died, maybe you should start living. She'd put up with you."

"Her judgment in character is severely flawed, thus I will not trust her."

Then Herbert titled his head and jumped down. He went to the right corner wall and began banging his hand on the green tiles. He got down his knees and put his ear to the wall and then tapped slowly on a tile. He put his fingernails over its edge and he pulled out its face, revealing a hollow space. Herbert gave a grin and for a brief moment enjoyment. Meg was standing back with a distance between she and Daniel and Herbert and all the bodies, but for that moment even she began to walk closer to see what was there.

Herbert reached into the hollow part of the wall and pulled out a dusty plastic bag. He walked over to the table and laid it out, reaching into the bag and pulling out a folded piece of paper.

"What's that?" Daniel asked, pointing to the bag.

"My first experiment." Herbert grinned.

Daniel could not see, but it was a rat who had decomposed nearly entirely by now, but at one time in its life it was being given open heart surgery by a young Herbert West with little army knives and methods he had only known by memory from observation. Herbert had attempted to bring it back through electric shock from a few D batteries.

Herbert unfolded the paper and handed it to Daniel.

He then placed the rat back into the hollow spot and covered it as if he had never even returned.

Meg came over to read the note. It was an aged paper and written in pencil the sentence had been somewhat smeared and faded, but the words will still there and still could be read. He lowered it for her to be able to read, and they saw a gateway into the beginning of all this.

"Death Will Die, Herbert West, age 11." It said with his signature.

"Let us go." Herbert said and began to walk out.

It was then Daniel Cain realized all this did not begin when he met Herbert, instead Daniel had entered this whole thing at its end, it began much sooner, and in a much more lonesome manner.

-----------------

Herbert West's home was a small thing. It did look nice and cozy, but it was small and had been cleaned by the city. Within nothing had been touched and instead covered in plastic. Daniel watched with careful stepped noting everything that could have possibly started Herbert West on his journey through death.

It was late, Herbert told them, he was tired, the sun was gone, it was time they slept. He allowed them his parents' bedroom to sleep, and out of courtesy the two only cuddled. And he went to his room, which Daniel found incredibly dull for a child's room, white walls with mere furniture and nothing more.

But further questions could be answered only in the morning.

What no one knew at the time was that their arrival was most anticipated. As soon as Herbert West stepped on the grounds that was his home, it knew he was here. It knew West's footsteps and it knew how he put more weight on his heel than he should, and he knew that light step Herbert attempted to complete with each moment. It knew he was here, and it had been waiting for such a long time. And so did it watch the boy and his friends, if they could be called friends. Did it watch and feel as he moved along the town, from the Hall to the Hospital where it knew the boy had spent much of his life. And it knew, it was time, for the boy had left it, and he had returned an entirely knew and different. For the boy's step was different, it was heavier, it was tired from the running he had done from the dead, and the bodies he had to carry. The boy left it, and he had returned beaten by the world and it knew, it was time, after so long it was time.

It was time it met the boy for the first time in decades.

The boy slept. The young lad had warn himself out, overestimated how well he had gotten since his rebirth, always a common mistake amongst the youth. Constantly do they overestimate their standards, constantly do they think they can go on forever and ever. Never do they look back at what they've done, and see their faults and their endpoints. Never do they take a step back and see life for what it is. They can't even understand it. Even this young boy by the name of Herbert West, his youth betrays him, wisdom has escaped him, even he knows not the fundalmentals of life and death. Young little Re-animator, he has only scratched the surface. There is so much more for him to take, so much more for him to see. The bigger picture, it takes more than one lifetime to even guess at what it is.

And so it sent his toy to go and seek out the young boy, the young Re-animator and deliver a message.

The toy came in the form of an eyeball.

It came from the creek of the basement door, rolled in through a small hole. Then it unwrapped its optic nerve, forming them into strands that became its legs. It was a long and elegant creatures with those thin pieces of muscle, made to send electric signals to the brain to give off sight. It was graceful and gentle in its step as it rose up the stairs with speed like a spider who had crawled those walls all its life. It knew where it was going, whom it was supposed to go and meet, what message it was meant to carry. It knew the boy's time had come, a meeting was now necessary. For years he grew and then he left, and upon his return it was time. The boy was to become a man, the Re-animator was to truly defeat his mortal enemy named sweet lady death.

It crept under the door and was opened to the rest of the world. It crept along the wooden floors, going once more up stairs to the second floors. It went passed a door and peered in to see Meg and Daniel, and then it moved on, to the room it knew he would be in.

Herbert West slept a deep sleep of which he had not experienced enough off. He slept on his side with his back to the door and his face to the moonlight of his open window. He shook in his sleep in a fit of a dream that shook him off from his depths and gave him some awareness of the waking world.

He heard scurrying and believed it to be a rat.

But then he heard a banging noise against wood and he opened his eyes. There he saw a sihoulette of something in the moonlight, his eyes betrayed him, they needed the aid of glasses. He went and reached for his desk putting them on to see what it was that had awaken him.

And when he saw it he was horrified.

He stared at the eye and the eye stared back at him. It titled itself as if giving off a curious sense, then rose itself by its optic nerve to get a better look at Herbert. He could see even in the darkness the pupil grow and shrink and the eye bent down still looking at him.

He thought it was a sick joke of some sort. That someone knew about him and what he had done, he thought someone had done this to toy with him, to show him he was about to be exposed. Already Herbert was rushed and guessing where it was this man was hiding, and what he could do to deny his involvement with death. Someone had done this, someone was toying with him. Someone was laughing at him, someone had found his serum, someone had found the entrance to the graveyard from their home, the ashes of failed experiments, something and followed them there.

He was going to kill them, whoever it was, and bring him back and release him into the world to get run over by a car or something.

Then after a moment of examining the eye crawled down to the bed and to the floor, and began to walk off.

Herbert followed it of course. Realizing that it could not have been his, for it was much more advanced than he ever thought possible. It seemed to possess some sort of higher thought, even though it somehow lacked a brain. It had much more control over its movement, it was smooth, and in control, and its nerves that acted as legs danced with each step.

No, this was an improvement on him, and perhaps thus a mockery of his entire life.

But then Herbert began wondering, who on Earth could possess better skill than he, and have followed him all this way to know where he was to mock him now at the middle of the night? It made no sense.

But he followed the eye and slowly realized its intentions. For it went into the basement and went into the locked iron door, and peeked out one last time, even waving at him with one nerve before it finally left him.

Herbert stood at the entrance of the basement, and he knew. It was a message, and the message was that someone else was here, and it was time they met.

-------------

Next Chapter coming soon.

The Keeper and Re-animator of the eye will be investigated by Herbert as tensions with Meg begin and Daniel can't help wonder who was it that killed Herbert's father?


	5. He Did Not Sleep

When he was nine Amanda insisted on a game of hide and seek throughout the hospital, when it was found that Herbert West was not so enthusiastic she volunteered to do the seeking. She counted to a hundred, and Herbert walked off not in an effort to hide but now bored of her and found that he was free of his obligation to be with her.

He walked to the elevator amongst prestigious doctors and dying, and strangely enough no one stopped this boy, this quiet boy that no one noticed. He went to the very bottom of the hospital and walked down the quiet and cold hallway down to the morgue.

Where Dr. Combs welcomed him and sat him up onto the counter because he was too short to see if he stood, and asked Herbert if he was supposed to be there, to which Herbert merely stared and asked what the man on the table died of.

----------------

Herbert West, upon watching the Eye walk off, went into the kitchen.

He did not sleep, he does not sleep, he has never really slept. He enjoys that saying, you can sleep when you're dead, yes, that's his sentiments exactly. Life is short and fleeting and why must one waste it with the need for sleep he'll never know. If only the metabolism had evolved to somehow conserve more energy from the foods they ate, perhaps. All this however does not change the fact, that, that night he did not sleep. He watched as that Eye walked from him and into the basement where he does not ever go, and he did not sleep afterwards.

He's cooking now. He can cook, he had to know how to cook or else he would have starved long ago. He cooks healthy things, things the body will prosper with, he has a strict diet that is of prime importance and is at the peak of health. He cooks these healthy things so his body will not die, so he could live on, as long as he could, as healthy as he could. He saw that eyeball he watched as it left him and he went into the kitchen and he began to cook. He realized after the tenth pancake that he was reacting to a bit of shock, but found that he was not about to stop cooking and continued.

He made a feast that he was not going to eat, whatever Meg had bought yesterday he was going to cook it into something, and everything she bought he hated and it did not fit into his diet anyway. Nonetheless, he could it all, three day's worth of all three meals for three people.

Meg and Daniel walked down the stairs with little giggles as Daniel kissed her neck on their way down. They stopped at the doorway to the kitchen and stared for a moment as Herbert continued on cooking.

"Herbert…?" Daniel asked.

"Yes?" He answered.

"What are you doing?"

"That is a fairly simple question, one I believe you can answer on yourself." Herbert said cleaning his hands.

"All of this?" Daniel continued. "Did something happen?"

"No." Herbert said.

Daniel looked at Meg.

"That's his no, that means yes." He told her and she nodded.

To this Herbert got upset at them and stopped in his tracks to stare at them with fury and intensity that had been repressed for his entire lifetime.

"What's going on, Herbert!?" Daniel yelled in reply to this stare.

"I told you, nothing!" Herbert said.

Herbert could see that this behavior was even odd for him, and knew that Daniel was not going to stop his questions until he got an answer. Herbert went to his batch of spaghetti and knew he had to think very quickly. He could not tell them of the Eye, he could not tell them that there was someone else here who was much and perhaps better than he. Even Herbert could tell that was a life they wanted to leave behind as soon as possible, and Herbert was not about to go through the unnecessary arguing their knowing of the Eye would cause. Explanations and yelling that would ultimately solve nothing. No, he would lie, like he had for a good part of his life. Lying all the time. Lying that he was normal. That he was not brilliant. That all he wanted was to become a good doctor.

So Herbert stopped and he sat down in a manner he knew presented anguish. And he held his head heavy and stared at the plate before him full of salad.

"I think my father's death has effected me more than I wanted to believe." Herbert tells him. "I woke up last night, and I came down here, and I started cooking."

"Herbert…" Meg spoke out first.

She went to the table beside him and laid her hand over his wrist and began to rub it in comfort, Herbert fought himself not to move her away for the gesture he knew was out of kindness, no matter how much he hated it. Meg, the sweet girl she was, despite all she knew about this man, she laid her head on his shoulder in manners of comfort.

Herbert looked up at Daniel who stared at him, unmoving. He was afraid for a moment his ruse had not worked over Daniel, and he was about to have a lot more respect for Daniel than he previously had. But then Daniel sat down across from them and stared at him with saddened eyes.

"I'm sorry." Daniel said.

Herbert nodded.

"I know you are not used to feeling this way." Daniel went on. "But for once in your life Herbert, you don't have to go through something on your own."

"Thank you." Herbert attempted to put meaning into the words as much as possible.

Then Daniel did something Herbert did not expect. He looked up at Herbert with a hardened look, the likes of which Herbert had never seen upon Daniel's face. Herbert West knew Daniel with only two faces, that of fear and disgust, and love and passion. Fear and disgust when working together, perhaps of the work itself, perhaps partly towards Herbert himself. And love and passion of course to his Meg. But here Daniel looked at him with ruthless determination, a look that was above its own pain, a look that held within it anger and despair and somehow seemed indifferent to all of it. It was a look Herbert recognized as his own. Daniel looked at him in this manner, raised his head a bit and attempted to speak several times before forming any actual words.

"My dad was taking me home from a baseball game, you know, when I was seven and you always want to play baseball when you grow up. I didn't listen when mom told me how it happened exactly, whose fault it was, but regardless, we were hit or we hit something. Dad's hit on his left side, I'm protected by his own body from major damage." Daniel says with just a hint of softness.

Then Daniel leaned in closer.

"I watched in the hospital as they tried to stuff his bones back into his neck, and I knew, I knew he was going to die. And I knew I was going to prevent that pain I was feeling. I would save lives, if not for them, then for the people that loved them, the people that need them."

Daniel stared with hardened eyes, and Herbert West lowered his, he did not expect this. It was a good explanation for Daniel's closeness to his patients, a good explanation for Daniel's caring heart towards strangers, if nothing it was a good explanation.

Meg then rose from Herbert's shoulder, and put her hand to her mouth, to which Daniel's hardness vanished and he leaned to his lover.

"I'm okay." Meg smiled at his quick worry. "Just a bit sick. I'm going to go lay down, will you be all right, Herbert?"

"Yes." He nodded to her as she rose and left with just a kiss to Daniel.

Daniel watched as she left then turned back to Herbert with that same stern face, something quite cold. He looked upon his friend, if Herbert West could have been called a friend, Daniel supposed that once you're covered in your housemate's blood saving him from a headless corpse, that it could be counted as a friend. And as his friend, Daniel knew of the horrible things Herbert West was capable of, and he knew all of them he was capable of without remorse or without sorrow, lacking even a second thought in all his actions, and it was these things that he feared in Herbert.

For Daniel Cain was Herbert West's friend, and he knew him.

He knew that this supposedly sudden sorrow over his father could not have been so sincere. For this Daniel Cain stared, and then put his chin on his hand still staring.

"What's really wrong, Herbert?" Daniel Cain asked his friend.

Herbert's first thought was a curse word, saddened that he had underestimated Daniel's interpreting skills as well as his acting. Herbert remained silent for a moment, further attempting to continue his own lying. Daniel found a fork and started eating some nearby salads as he waited for Herbert's answer.

"You know, at least I was telling the truth." Daniel said. "About my Dad."

"Why do you think I am lying?" Herbert asked.

Daniel gave a look of obviousness, and Herbert West sighed and remained silent.

"I do not like this place." Herbert said. "I do not like this town, I do not like this house."

"Why not?"

"Some of us, Daniel, are not so fortunate with our childhood."

Daniel thought to himself that much was obvious when putting into account Herbert West's life career choice, but saw Herbert was not going to tell him, and if it was life threatening Herbert would, and Herbert may still, but for now, Daniel thought, let him be. He simply continued eating some of the salad, and then he smiled at his friend whom he barely knew.

"This is really good." He told Herbert, pointing to his food.

"Thank you." Herbert said.

Megan walked in quietly to the doorway.

"I should go to the store and get some more food." Meg said and Daniel laughed.

"More food?" Daniel asked.

"We can't save it all, it won't fit." Meg explained with a smile. "You can wrap it all up if you want, sweetie." She told him. "Herbert would you like to come with me?" She asked,

"What?" Daniel was more surprised than Herbert himself.

Herbert would have said no but felt he should get away from Daniel before more interrogating continued.

They were only gone for ten minutes, and Daniel was wrapping up some food when the door knocked. Finishing up his apple Daniel Cain ran over to the door to open it. There he found an aged man, probably in his late forties or something like that. He looked up at Daniel with confused eyes, then looked away embarrassed at his look. The man looked up again and smiled. Black hair, green eyes then looked around behind Daniel.

"Is Herbert West here by any chance?" The man asked.

"You just missed him." Daniel told.

"Oh, and who are you?"

"Daniel Cain, sir, I am a friend of Herbert's." Daniel stretched his hand and the man took it.

"A friend?" The man seemed surprised. "Oh that is good to hear."

"So who are you?" Daniel said.

"Oh! Yes, sorry, my name is Jeffrey Combs, I suppose, I was a friend of Herbert's as well. I work at the hospital you see and…" Jeffrey went on.

"You're the coroner?" Daniel grinned.

"Yes, how, how did you know?" Jeffrey smiled.

"I met Herbert West while he was living in the hospital morgue." Daniel said with some smiles.

"Oh, yes, I had hoped he'd stopped that."

"He did, he and I are housemates."

"That's good, that's very good. Um…I was hoping I could catch him while he was here, but could you tell him I stopped by?"

"Yeah, of course. You…you knew him before?"

"Well yes, brilliant boy."

"Oh yeah, that's Herbert for ya. Hey could you tell me…how he was with his dad?"

Jeff frowned to this and looked saddened.

"I mean." Daniel tried. "We came here cause of his dad, and I don't know, I was just, wondering." Daniel nodded.

"His father was a very hurt man. How he was with Herbert I cannot say, for Herbert never revealed that to any of us."

"Oh…I see."

"I should be going, just tell him I came by."

"Right."

"All right, have a good day, Mr. Cain."

Daniel closed the door, wondering of his friend's worry. He did not know what to really do, he did not know what was wrong. Daniel Cain was at a loss to Herbert West, who with all his heart he did not believe was saddened by his father's death. Herbert was not like that, he knew he wouldn't be like that. But he wondered what, and almost did not want to know what. Daniel gave a sigh, he rubbed his head, he was too young for this all.

-------------

Herbert walked down the aisles of the hometown grocery store still standing from his childhood, he was afraid for Daniel Cain, in that house alone, where he knew there was an unknown entity there, with the power of Re-animation. Herbert would admit that there could be others like himself, it seems based upon that Mary Shelly Novel he had just recently learnt of, that the idea of bringing back the dead scientifically has been around for ages. But then he did not think that there'd be any Re-animator greater than he himself, as dedicated and as constructed, and yet there was another apparently even better than himself. He was in an unknown panic, buried under the layers of indifference on his face. He was unsure of what to do, but saw that if there was violence intended upon him it would have occurred already, instead of an Eyeball a Body would have been sent, not a messenger but an assassin.

He pushed the cart as Meg placed some ice cream within it and smiled as she walked along with him. Her actions confused him only a little, and he wondered why it was she wanted him along, but he was not going to ask.

"Last night, Daniel wouldn't stop talking about what you've taught him." She said in their silence after walking a whole five aisles.

"He did?" Herbert asked.

"Yeah. He says…Well he doesn't really tell me everything that happened." She looked at him with some anger. "But he does…He does tell me he appreciates what he knows about life, about death and all that. He was telling me finally about some of the experiences he's been through." She looked at West. "I'd thought I thank you for saving his life." She said.

He saw her anger, he saw her rage, he has been told women do not say what they mean and he knew unlike any other man probably, what she did actually mean. She was not thanking him in those moments, she was asking him why Daniel, why her Daniel, why did you put him in harm's way. But Herbert West looked at her and pushed the cart.

"I thank Daniel for saving mine." He said. "He has done all this to his own accord, he has been a loyal assistant, one I could not have been without." He spoke the truth there. "It did not seem right to allow him to die when I would live." Of course it seemed at the time he too was going to live.

"So you do have some sense of what is right and wrong." She said with some disdain.

"Would you like to live forever, Megan?" He asked her. "Alongside Daniel? Just wait a moment, and think about it. I want to live on forever on my own, but certainly, you would find it better with him. Think of it, watching the world go by with him, evolve and conquer, looking upon petty wars with an appreciation only immortals could understand, looking at the evolution of culture with inspecting eyes, remembering. To never age, to never die, to go on and on without ailment, to have no fear that you would wake and he would be dead." Herbert explained.

To this Megan seemed speechless as her eyes slowly became thoughtful and turned away from Herbert.

"Now imagine that." Herbert continued. "After twenty years of a life you spent absent from the world, from its wonders, from people and their own wonders, all of which fascinates you, all of which you want, but you are stranger to it, and worst of all, you chose to be a stranger to it. And your longings for it disgust you, but continue. After not having it at all, you could have it forever. Do you not think then, despite what is said to be right and what is said to be wrong, it is worth striving for?"

Herbert West was now angry, and it was no good to be panicked and angry and not usually in these states of mind. It was a dangerous thing for someone so cold and emotionless as Herbert West to be so emotional. He was angry and he wanted Meg to be as uncomfortable as possible.

"Your Daniel should be rewarded for entering this work and retaining his humanity and his love for you. Do not grievance me with what could have happened, because it did not happen. I in no way hurt him, I showed him life I showed him death, and all the while seeing such horrors he still found it in him to not go insane, but to love you." Herbert told her.

"I used to be so afraid." Megan said, quieter, softer. "When I wouldn't hear from him. I was so scared that maybe something happened."

"Rightfully so." Herbert told her.

"I'm sorry." She said. "I don't know what's wrong with me, your Dad and all, I'm just, not in the right mind." She lowered her head. "It just scares me so much."

"If you are worried that I cannot take care of him, or he cannot take care of himself in all this, perhaps Megan, you should take it upon yourself care of him." Herbert told her.

And then the silence returned, and their minds wandered away from each other, their focuses left the other. Herbert West returned to his second Re-animator, and how it would be a proper way to reply to the message, and decided that he was going to reply.

Upon this revelation he began to walk away from Meg.

"I'm going to the hospital." He told her and she did not ask anything further.

When he was gone, and away, she grabbed the one thing she really wanted to go to the store for, a pregnancy test.

--------------------

Herbert West, Re-animator, like a quiet boy that no one ever really noticed, once more grew quiet and no one really noticed him. He walked down the hospital's halls, through the chaos with out shedding a bit of care, he avoided the nurses he knew, and Amanda who sought out for him. He walked that path he knew so well and entered into the cold basement of the morgue, entering without anyone stopping him.

The morgue of which he spent nights in. Where he'd find an empty bed or simply the floor, and lay down to sleep. Where the coroner would come to wake him, tell him if he needs a bed he should go upstairs, the nurses would gladly give him a bed. But no, quiet and young Herbert West, in his silence wished only to sleep amongst his enemy, this death which he set himself against. Dr. Jeffrey Combs, coroner, keeper of death, automatically had his respect as a young child, as Herbert interpreted Dr. Combs' role of extreme importance, and perhaps more importance than it actually had. Herbert would go to the various nurses to know of life, but it was this Dr. Combs that he had to go to, to learn about death. And it was Herbert West who sat on the counter because he was too short to see standing, to watch as Dr. Combs opened up and showed him the body in death during decomposition, and times of trauma.

With quiet dignity Herbert speedily walked across the two rooms into the cellar where bodies were frozen, and then he went to a drawer to open it up to reveal where mere body parts were stored. There he found the parts of people he would never know, this is where the real horrors of the hospital were kept. Where the murdered and the maimed go, where things that barely at all look human go, where mere parts come after the body has been broken into pieces from murders, or car crashes, or any sort of wreck. He searched through the bags of parts, seeking out a part of good size and weight, for he had a plan.

He was going to reply to that eye.

He held in his hand, another hand, weighed it in the air and decided it was a good fit, and stuffed it into his coat pocket.

"Herbert?" Came a familiar voice.

Herbert turned with immediate and almost instinctive anger at whomever was disturbing him, but the scorn on his face softened when in the dim blue light he saw who it was.

"Dr. Combs?" Herbert backed up into the open drawer and closed it, making a snapping noise as the metal container shut itself.

"What are you doing?" Mr. Combs smiled.

"I was looking for something."

"Of course you were." Mr. Combs laughed. "I guess old habits die hard, right Herbert?"

"Yes, Dr. Combs." Herbert agreed.

"You went to Europe right?"

Herbert nodded. And to this Combs smiled as he stepped off into the other room expecting Herbert to follow, he turned on the main lights so they could finally see each other and Combs sat down as Herbert remained standing.

"Where'd you go?" He asked.

"I began in London, briefly I was in Paris, I settled as an apprentice in Switzerland."

"I've been to Paris. You must have learned some French right?"

"I'm fluent."

"Oh, yes, I suppose you would be."

Then there came an awkward silence as Combs somehow seemed saddened by this whole affair. Herbert West, did not know why but for this one man who taught him much of the enemy he was actually fairly concerned.

"Have I said something wrong?" Herbert asked.

"No, no, I'm sorry." Combs sighed. "Herbert, your father died the day you left."

"I'm aware of that."

"His face was bashed in."

"How…tragic." Herbert tried to find a more distressing word but could not when it came to his father.

"Herbert…did he hurt you?" Combs tried.

"Are you accusing me of murder, Dr. Combs?" Herbert acted like he was being defensive.

"No, I just, I just mean…"

"I'm a doctor now! I spent my life trying to understand how to keep people alive!" Herbert consciously rose his voice in a fake anger that he was so good at replicating. "Do I look like I can kill a man!?"

Herbert pointed to himself and looked distressed, copying the many expressions he had seen Daniel make at various points of their relationship. That fear in Daniel's eyes, he had to see it at least three times to get it right and replicate it and was using it quite well here.

"Herbert, that's not what I meant!" Combs spoke up.

"I…I just…I wouldn't, my father, my own father!" Herbert continued, almost having fun.

"Herbert, you slept here just to get away from your father!"

Herbert shook his head.

"I wouldn't, I would never." Herbert wiped his eyes. "He may have hated me, he may have scorned me, but I would never, I never hated him, I don't hate people! I…I…" Herbert tried not to smile.

"I'm sorry." Combs said. "He was killed, he was alone, nothing was taken, nothing was damaged, there was only a note in your handwriting saying you've gone." Combs said.

"I have to go now." Herbert said his voice returning instantly to normal.

Herbert began walking out.

"West…Herbert." Combs looked towards him. "If you did do anything, I would not blame you. Please stop by again, I'd love to hear what you thought of Notre Dame."

Herbert looked back, and in a small sense of security nodded.

------------------

The night had come once more as it always had and always will. Daniel laid across his bed as Meg laid across his chest and over his heart to hear that life indicating beat. Food had been wrapped and stored. A Pregnancy Test unused lay hidden somewhere in the bathroom. Herbert West laid at the bottom of his basement, before the iron door of which he had never paid much attention to during his childhood. He sat with his doctor's bag that glowed of green serum and the hand of which he stole. Carefully he removed the hand and put just enough formula into a syringe, and he stabbed it into the hand. He threw away the syringe and held tightly with both hands over the hand.

Then he sprang forth with life, with strength seemingly impossible it struggled against Herbert's grip and crawled away on its fingers. Herbert smashed it with his foot and tried so very hard to stay silent. He stabbed the thing with a piece of glass until it grew slow in its bleeding injury. He finally took it and stuffed it under the iron door, a reply to whomever sent the Eye.

He heard his hand run up against the iron door and punch so to speak against the metal and even try to crawl back under the door creak to which Herbert would have to block with his feet. Until finally the small panic ceased, and wonderful silence came again.

Herbert waited, unsure of how to feel. Excited or anxious, either way he was bringing his gun, which he hid in his bag.

He then heard footsteps.

And the iron door began to open.

And he looked upon the face of his greeter with worrying surprise. For his greeter stood with lifeless eyes, a bleeding mouth, a face of stitches, a smell of death, but somehow a rational and calm demeanor. The greeter looked down at him, and grinned, blood spilling out of his mouth.

------------------

Next Chapter coming soon.

Of which finally Herbert West shall meet his fellow Re-animator and see more similarities than he should.

Coming later….

Dr. Jeffrey Combs shall return for more. (I love that line "Do I look like I could kill a man!?" I laughed at that, I'm such a dork.)

Amanda can't run fast.

Daniel and Meg are too young.

Herbert West will meet his maker.


	6. Our Genes

It is known to those of you, that Herbert West created an artificial woman in the efforts to expand his horizons of experimentation, to toy with his own boundaries, to test what he could do and could not like a cynical child, however he built it more or less for his close companion Daniel with the temptation of bringing back Meg. As you can see by now Meg here is not dead, and I will tell you now Herbert West created that woman for solely himself.

It came at a time where perhaps Herbert West had grown tired of his own failures and wanted to see some results. All his life had at that point amounted to mere simple movements of limbs, or horrible creatures walking around in human bodies, killing anything they saw. Herbert lacked to see the inhumanity in all these things, yet despaired over the fact that at that point his seventeen years of life had basically shown fruitless. He speculated on the amount of seventeen years, how valued they should be, how far he should be, and yet was not. Where life could not be restored perhaps creating it would be easier, and from her he would learn, and he would perhaps succeed with her. At least this is what his scientific mind allowed him to believe. Whatever human capacity was within Herbert West at that rather fragile time sought out companionship and at some unconscious level knew he would not be able to seek it out a woman, given his setbacks, so he decided to make one.

"Why a woman?" Daniel Cain asked in utter disgust one night.

Daniel had known Herbert for merely a few months then, he was not yet tired of the experiments and was still optimistic. Though horrified by the very idea of his roommate becoming Dr. Victor Frankenstein, he still felt that perhaps some good could come of it.

"Women are fascinating." Herbert West explained to him.

He touched the stomach of his lifeless creation and gently slid his fingers down her to the stitches that he had been so careful to give.

"They have the ability to do what I cannot. They can create, and store life within them. It is a fascinating ability, one that I hope I have succeeded in giving her." He told.

Children. Herbert West did so love infants.

She was a challenge worthy of him he felt. But it was more than that. She was a companion worthy of him. She would be alone, as alone as he was. She would not know how to act amongst others, just as he. Together in immortality they would teach each other.

This would be the action in which Daniel would separate his ties with Herbert's work, for the events that followed her so called birth were unspeakable for Daniel, partly because that woman West made tried to kill Meg, and Meg would learn the workings of that thing that appeared so human, Herbert West. Daniel was at first excited, as he too partook in the teaching of Herbert's creation. He too sat beside her and attempting to teach her language. He would say "Daniel" and he would point to himself "Dan," he'd tried simpler. "Daniel." "Dan." "Daniel." "Dan."

Daniel would tell Herbert she seems somehow afraid, Herbert had no idea what he was talking about.

I will tell you, Herbert West had the theory that life would be stored into this creature, for there had never been a life prior to it. For life he felt was not central, the mind was not stored in the brain, but it was stored all through out the body. Hands knew what hands did, they knew what they touched, they knew what they held. The heart knew it beat, the brain knew it thought, legs knew it walked. That is why most of Herbert's experiments return with minimal levels of intelligence, for only the body returns, not the higher thought, the higher mind, but simply the body parts and what they knew they did. The body parts would all remember their functions, but without the entire body to go into a spasm of thought the body parts would see that they need to work together, and eventually a mind would be created from each part. And that is why he chose his parts carefully. The womb of a virgin. The heart of a mother. The hands of an artist. The feet of a dancer. The legs of a runner. The lungs of a woman who lived far from polluted air. The spine of a gymnast. The eyes of a brain surgeon, whom he had actually known from the hospital. The stomach of a vegetarian. The lips of a singer.

One can imagine it took quite a long time to find all this.

He even forced Daniel Cain to take out a good portion of Herbert's own liver, an organ that was a fairly easy procedure to do on their kitchen floor, and an organ that could regenerate what was taken. He trusted Daniel. He really wanted her to have something of his. So he gave her a part of his liver, and a good portion of his blood to flow through her heart. He gave her the brain, which he felt was too difficult to compile as the body was, of a young intellect, and felt it would suffice for him to teach her.

It took four hours before she came to life, and she did so by waking Herbert who rested upon her chest in the waiting of a heart beat. She stood and walked fairly quickly, learning faster than he had anticipated, she was bald as Herbert felt it would be a polite gesture to allow her to choose her own hair color, and for a moment she stumbled and he grabbed her.

He looked upon her with a fascination he has not yet felt again, and she the same. So strange was it to see your work get up and look at you with soft eyes, after all Herbert had been through. So strange to have her hold onto you for support instead of trying to strangle you. He looked upon her and felt she was beautiful, her stitches, her swollen parts, her exposed muscles in places, it was amazing to witness.

This was going to be the companion Herbert West was going to have for the rest of his life. For he would make her in his image, for she will know of re-animation and together they would perfect it so they two would be immortal.

However he had not anticipated caring for her mental state when he himself did not have the most perfect of mental states.

She became possessive, obsessive, but very smart. She was silent despite her brilliant intellect, she did not wish to speak. She saw not the value of another's life, and grew to hate all others besides her Herbert West. She tried to kill Daniel in his sleep, and killed a solicitor by what she called an accident. She was not going to be denied what she wanted, and she wanted to see the world. And upon all this when she said that Herbert was a failure, and that he was pathetic and needed to make his own girlfriend, did Herbert attempt to cast her into a fire, and kill her.

However she did survive, attempting to kill Meg, Daniel, and Herbert himself. She stood by him in graveyard, dressed in a bride's outfit that Daniel shuddered to think where she had gotten it. She was burnt on half her body and her teeth could be seen through her lips. But she did not seem to notice.

"Creator," she called him, "I am sorry for what I said. I was upset. I made a mistake. I should have thought about it more."

He was covered in blood and so was she. Megan was crying in Daniel's arms.

"I am sorry as well." Herbert said. "I was upset. I made a mistake too. I should have thought about it more."

She kissed him.

Herbert ripped her apart as she screamed for his mercy, her last words that she uttered before he deprived her of her tongue, were "I hate you!" And proceeded with dismantling each of her parts to their very organs, where they were left to twitch and bleeding on the ground, where he carried them into a metal trash can, and poured gasoline into it, and made a bon fire for himself.

To this Herbert walked over to the near hysterical Meg, and warned her to never speak of this, or worst things would happen to her, Daniel screamed at him, and Herbert stared at him, telling him I expect you to handle this.

He still has the scar over where parts of his liver were taken.

He does not think of her often anymore.

He would have named her after his mother.

If only he knew his mother's name.

-------------------

Now despite what ethics will allow there is something quite admirable about Herbert West in his determination, weather you'd admit it or not. There is something quite honorable in all. How he does not falter. How he will never, ever give up. How he has sacrificed all that would have made him human. From childhood and onwards was Herbert West on a mission, and has yet to stray from it like so many others would have. Perhaps it is for selfish reasons, and he has hurt so many to get as far as he has, yet still, there is a dignity to it all.

He was at that time merely twenty-two, younger than Daniel, and older than Meg. But he saw the world with even younger eyes, yet felt a hatred of it of a man older than lifetimes. His actions too were that of men with no souls. Herbert West did not philosophize much, he did not care if the reality was as it seemed, for either way no amount of effort could change what was perceived as reality and thus he was bound by its rules, and that included for the time death. But he felt that there was no God, and there was no soul, there was human intellect and reason that had been evolved to be used as a tool for survival. His efforts he saw were then a natural extension of that reason and its power.

Herbert West stood up to meet his greeter's lifeless eyes.

"Who are you?" He said with anger, real and utter anger perhaps the only emotion he welcomed.

The Greeter's eyes narrowed as if it could not understand what he was saying. Then it smiled like it finally got it and then lowered its head in a bow. The Greeter was now revealed even in the dark to have one long and endless stitch straight down its body beginning at the neck as Herbert examined the bare chest with careful eyes. Then the Greeter opened the door and stepped in, motioning for Herbert to follow.

"No." Herbert said. "Tell me who you are."

The Greeter looked at Herbert with no sense of self, no sense of what it was doing or why it was there, completely mindless, lifeless, like all the experiments except it was not trying to kill him. Then suddenly life filled those eyes and it appeared to have a thought and then it smiled with love and life in its face. As if it had been taken over by something else, or inhabited by something else. Its mouth opened for words to come out, but first only blood and spit did.

"Come on Herbert." It said. "My Boy wouldn't leave me now would he?"

Once these words were said the life disappeared once more, to return the Greeter to a mindless body that moved. The Greeter opened the door wide to allow Herbert in, who after a moment of pausing step forth. He did not know what to think, this Greeter so calm. But Herbert West was perhaps more confident than he should have been, his many encounters with the strength of the dead allowed him to think rightfully so he had some anticipation of what the Greeter would do upon attacking, and he was sure he could have handled it.

And so Herbert West ventured deep into the ground, following this bag of moving flesh. All his life he had seen that iron door, he was told it was an old bomb shelter from the wars, he should have known that man he called father was lying, that man always lied. Yet that man, he wouldn't have comprehended this, perhaps he didn't really know what was down here. For Herbert looked on, and saw only a long a narrow hallways light by green lights that hung from the far off ceiling. Cramp this hallway was, the walls were rusted metal with some dirt being exposed from beneath it. Pipes ran up and down over the walls, off to places unknown, and hinting that the size of this place was enormous. Which turned out to be true as they kept walking and walking deeper into the Earth. It became very hot and very dark and very damp.

Herbert's mind raced with thoughts. He had not anticipated this. This place was old and expanding, he could tell by the foundations it was decades upon decades old and new construction was continuing. He didn't know what lived down here. The size gave evidence for a whole community, and Herbert began to wonder if the size was to house the amount of dead corpses there were walking around like this Greeter, for the smell of death began to appear to him. He could smell it at its varying stages and he knew, he just knew there were many, many down here. Leading to the idea that there was quite a dedicated re-animator down here, living here, perhaps more than one, a whole community in search of immortality.

That thought made Herbert very excited, for it meant that there were more minds working as his, wanting the same goal, and ready to accept him despite the gruesome things he had done, for they had done the same.

Yet Herbert West was not about to let himself get happy, and he stayed tense and allowed anger to enter him to give him an adrenaline which he knew he would need to escape whatever was down here if escape was necessary.

To anyone else at this point there would be terror, but Herbert West, probably nearly a mile underground was calm and collective, not noticing how horrifying an underground metal community that was dark was. Yet finally he could see where the hall opened up and the Greeter with his lifeless eyes looked behind him to see Herbert. Herbert stared over the Greeter to see the coming room. He could not see it yet, but he saw a green glow that illuminated the entire room and part of the hall. That glow, the greenish glow he knew so well. That glow that was within his blood, that flowed through out him giving him life.

His mouth slightly opened and a bit of awe came over him, quickly disappearing in the determination of Herbert West.

The Greeter stopped at the end of the hallway and allowed Herbert to pass, to see this room. He estimated that the ceiling which was just dirt with lights coming out of it was about a hundred feet above him, and the walls were laced in metals, with stairs, and a second and even third floor. To his right were huge barrels twenty feet tall in rows of five of that green glowing formula of life. At the end of them were metal capsules with round glass holes to see into them, they were filled with that formula and huge tubes that ran up to the sides of the wall connected them to the large barrels. Nearest to him was what appeared to be a morgue and a hospital all in one, he supposed a morgue and hospital were one in the same when dealing with re-animation. He saw various hospital equipment some twenty years old, and some newer than he had seen. He could smell death in the air but he could not find the bodies that the smell belonged to. He looked below him to see another floor where there was more of that formula. He looked down to his left to see more barrels of a clear liquid he suspected by the scent it made to be acid. A rather strong acid, a rather wonderful way to get rid of bodies.

Yet despite all this size he found no one there. He looked back to find the Greeter was gone, and it was then he pulled out his gun and held it close to his heart. Cautiously he stepped forth, trying not to be overwhelmed by the might of that place, the perfect laboratory for him and his workings.

Oh Daniel, he thought, Dan who wanted so much for him to give up that life, Dan who wanted so much to have a normal life, and for Herbert to have one with him. But Herbert West stood in that lab and knew that he was not meant for the norm. He somehow knew, by the air, the smells, that this was where he was meant to be. Whoever worked here if they wanted to be enemies he would kill them and take this place to continue his work. He just knew it, he has killed before, it gets easier he finds. His father, his Creation, countless others he has not revealed to Dan. Killing is part of all this. We must kill to understand life, ironic but true. His mind raced with what he could do there. With that near endless supply of his formula, a lab so far away from anyone or anything that would disturb, the perfect place to get rid of bodies without leaving a trace.

It was so utterly perfect he almost called it beautiful.

He almost forgot to aim his gun when he finally heard a voice.

"Herbert West." A man spoke out.

Herbert swung his gun in the direction he heard the voice but found only dark corners. Then he heard the same man laugh slightly.

"I mean you no harm, boy." The man said.

The voice sounded aged, probably forty or so, and he spoke with an amusement that angered Herbert.

"Perhaps I mean you harm." Herbert spat back, and the man laughed even more. "Who are you!?" Herbert yelled. "How did you get here? How long have you been here? What is your formula? Did you steal it from me?"

The man stopped his laughter and rested his hand on a rail on the second level.

"It could be said you stole it from me, Herbert West." The man said. "But we cannot blame ourselves for simply inheriting a likeness of minds, this is to be expected however given our relationship and that fact that we both know, we are our bodies, we live through them, they shape us." The man said.

"Our relationship?" Herbert spat.

"Yes, Herbert West." The man nodded in the darkness. "Do you like it?"

"What?"

"My Lab. It has been made with the culmination of decades in preparation for our great discovery." The man said. "I made them work you know, tireless bodies that knew not of suffering, working day in and day out until this place spread across this entire god forsaken town. I offer it to you now, this too can be yours, I give you room to grow, a gift that has been waiting for you since you left."

"Enough of this!" Herbert yelled and fired his gun towards the voice. "Who are you!?"

Yet his threats went on unnoticed for the man did not flinch and his voice did not falter.

"It is a rare occurrence that one would empty his pistol, isn't it Herbert West?" The man asked.

Herbert stopped in his mental thoughts to listen.

"But not for you." The man nodded. "I can tell by the readiness of which you hold your gun. It must be an even stranger occurrence for all of those bullets to be shot in a hospital. But not for you."

"How did you…?"

"Herbert West, Re-animator. You are an amazing boy, Herbert West. Look at what you've managed to accomplish in your short years on this Earth and with such little materials and with such little room to work. I am so glad you have returned."

"Who are you?"

"Did you, Herbert West, that your full name is Herbert West Junior?" The man paused. "I apologize for not giving you a middle name, but you see I was quite rushed and there was no time to think of a proper one that would have followed you all your life."

Herbert West paused.

"My father's name is Bruce Abbot." Herbert said.

"Do you really believe that? If we live through our bodies do you really think that man's DNA has determined who you are?" The man spat.

Herbert West, Re-animator, held his gun all the more tighter fixing his aim on the coming man who spoke such terrible words. Herbert entered a state of absence, he no longer allowed himself to be fully there, he was not about to listen to these lies. He was going to kill this man and take this lab for his own.

But then the man stepped down from the stairs, and Herbert saw his face. The man stood only a little taller than Herbert himself. He wore a white lab coat and white collar shirt. He knew the man was somehow in his forties, yet the face was youthful, free from age or pain, stress, or any of things that came with bringing back people from death. The face looked upon Herbert with sincere and hopeful eyes, calm in all this.

The only flaw in that face was of something Herbert assumed was a genetic defect. For the man had one eye green and the other blue and cold like ice. The man's hair was a mix of a light and aging blonde and brown dark hair.

Herbert stared at that face as the man titled his head and smiled so slightly, and Herbert saw the resemblance.

"Bruce Abbot is not your father, you know that." The man said.

"And you are?"

The man smiled proud like a father would.

Herbert's reaction to this was a mix of emotions he did not particularly like as he was never an expressive lad and he never allowed himself much of a chance to develop these emotions. To have them now he knew there was some danger as he did not know if he could control them as well as say Dan, who was so practiced with them.

"How can that be?" Herbert was able to say. "I mean, I don't believe you!" Herbert lifted his gun once more. "If you are who you say you are, why did you leave me in the care of that man!"

"You killed him didn't you? Before you left?" The man asked, and Herbert stared. "Why would you do that?"

"That man did not deserve the life he had within him!" Herbert yelled.

The man suddenly did something Herbert probably could never do. He frowned with sincere dissapointment, shame, and despair. Then the man drew closer to Herbert. Even if Herbert did not say it, it became clear to the man. (Or the man already knew about it).

"It wasn't supposed to be like that." The man with two eye colors said. "When I knew him he was a good man. I trusted him to take care of you."

"Did he know about this!?" Herbert motioned with his gun to the Lab.

"Of course not, for all he knew I had abandoned you."

"You did! I mean, if you are what you say you are!" Herbert said, still in denial.

"You have to understand, Herbert." The man tried, and he took another step.

"Don't touch me!" Herbert yelled, waving that gun, and the man stopped.

"I am your father. And I did not want to expose you to this." He motioned around them. "I wanted to spare you of this work, of this death, how could I have had a mere child here with me, watching as I carved up corpses? Even I knew that was not a life a child should have. I did it in the best interest for you."

"Why didn't you just stop this?" Herbert said, meaning this work with death.

The man stopped and he lowered his head.

"You wouldn't stop would you?" The man finally asked.

"I still don't believe you." Herbert shook his head.

"I have worked all my life Herbert, on finding immortality and bringing back the dead. I left you to live a free life I lacked, so that I may come back to you with an answer. But here, you have beaten me, you've come and found me." The man smiled. "But look at you, you've followed in my footsteps. My God, you have too much of my genes, the desire for it took over you as well, oh, my Boy, I'm sorry, I'm so…"

"Be quiet!" Herbert yelled.

"Herbert please, you and I, we can work together. Our common genes have led us to the same formula on life and death. Together we can figure this out, I know we can. Each barrel over there holds a variation on the formula, and look, come."

The man ran over to the copper cylinders where he pointed into the glass window. Herbert cautiously leaned down to see what was in it, and he was absolutely astounded. Within it he saw what appeared to be a fetus. A human fetus being given life by the same formula, a mechanical womb, given life by that serum.

"Now it appears human, but it is not." The man said. "This is my version of a cloning machine." He smiled. "Through alchemy I am able to reformat the chemical properties of dirt to create a body exactly like a human." The man spoke with pride. "But coming from dirt, these clones are not perfect. Their main purpose is to not raise suspicion within this small town and its providing of so few human experiments. So when I am forced to take a citizen I am able to replace them with one of these clones so no one notices they are missing. This copy is engineered to last only two days, and within those two days exhibit natural death. The body is buried or burned and then turns back to dirt without anyone noticing."

It was genius Herbert's first thought was. It would be impossible to engineer a real person, with life and soul, a mind, but a copy, just a copy of a body so that it may give the illusion of death, it was perfect. No one would know, no one would know the difference.

"I made it between waiting on more human subjects." The man explained. "I have had a lot of practice at this you see."

"It is marvelous." Herbert could not show his anger to this, it was beautiful, a leap in science the likes of which Herbert could have never imagined.

"Thank you, son." The man placed his hand on Herbert's shoulder and Herbert threw it away. "Imagine then, I am not your father." The man tried. "I propose we still work together, for our goal is worth it. There is so much we could learn from each other." The man continued.

Herbert backed away, but he backed away into another Dead man, not the Greeter he had previously seen, but another one, a new body held together by stitches. Herbert jumped as it stared mindlessly and tilted his head.

"I control them." The man said. 

"How?" Herbert West immediately asked.

"Prolonged exposure to our creation has given some unknown and unpredicted side effects." The man took out a vile that he kept in his pocket. "The serum creates a connection between those who have used it, making something similar to telepathy. Have you seen this before?"

Herbert's Woman.

"No." Herbert lied.

"It occurs you see, so my mind connects to theirs, which is not existence, thus I am dominant."

"You've injected yourself with that?" Herbert's eyes widened.

He swung the vile so slightly.

"A small potent, so I don't have to sleep. It keeps the mind sharp." The man said.

He smiled.

"Herbert please, there is something I must tell you. I would have allowed you to find all this on your own, but when you returned I saw there was something different about you from that young seventeen year old that I last saw."

"You've been spying on me?" Herbert hissed.

"You died didn't you Herbert?"

Herbert stopped and he could no longer keep his composure, it was all too much.

"Yet here you stand, breathing, alive." The man's voice saddened. "There is something in your genes isn't there? Our genes that has allowed this miracle to happen."

"I don't believe in Gods." 

"Merely an expression." The man paused. "I did not want to tell if you if I was unsure, but this has happened to me countless times. Herbert I have found few people in my life, that have returned from death, who have been successful re-animations. Who have stood and spoken just as you do before me due to genetic defects. But Herbert, they always die."

Herbert shook his head.

"They always die, the re-animation wears away, the life they have been given deteriorates as the body cannot contain it or maintain itself." The man neared him. "The longest I have witnessed this, the longest anybody has lived from this is three months. And I went to your room, Herbert, as you slept, I sent my eyes to go and take your blood, and I have found that is going to happen to you."

The man placed his hand on Herbert and this time Herbert could not find the strength to push him away.

"You are dying, and I am here to save you." The man held up a syringe of serum. "This is a medicine I have developed, it has the same basic properties as our formula. It will continue your life, but you will need to take it. Soon you will feel weak, Herbert, and you must take this or you will die."

Herbert after a long time of pausing stepped away, pathetically, and weakly.

"You're lying. You're manipulating me." Herbert West said.

"Please, son, you can't die."

"You're right. I can't." Herbert nodded.

"I have not seen you all your life…"

"Exactly!"

"Herbert please, we can save…"

Herbert hit that man who called himself his father with the barrel of his gun. The man leaned to the side from the force, spatting out blood from his mouth and revealing a long cut down his cheek. The man stared with no shock or resentment, he merely stared, as Herbert looked on, enraged, and about to do it again.

But Herbert stepped back, and ran back down that hallway up to his home.

------------

He entered the Emergency Room of the hospital he called home, and asked if an Amanda was in. The guard recognized him and told him she was on the night rotation and should be sleeping in the doctor's room. Herbert did not need to ask where this was and merely continued on, too much in a rush to engage in further and unnecessary conversation despite the fact it made him seem rude.

He banged on the glass window to the Doctors' room, making the most noise in that quiet and near lifeless hall of the hospital. The only noises coming from breathing machines and the beeping of heart monitors.

Amanda brushed her hair as she opened the door, and in a groggy voice she spoke.

"Herbert?" She asked.

"Let me in." He said with intensity.

He did not wait for her, he pushed her out of the way and turned on the light and placed a bag of blood samples on the nearest table.

"Wait you can't!" Amanda tried.

But then he turned to her, and in his fury she could see fear. In his intensity she saw panic. He lowered his head in anger and his brow narrowed, there was sweat over his forehead and fire in his eyes. He breathed deeply adding more evidence that he had ran over here like he did when he was a child, except near sunrise the run was colder.

"What is it?" She asked.

He pointed to the bags of two blood samples. One was his, the other was the blood he had scraped off the barrel of his gun he had taken from that man underground, the man with two eye colors.

"I need you to see if these two people are related. I want a genetic map and I want it now." Herbert told her. "You will do this for me."

She shook her head.

"Herbert, I don't understand." She tried.

"You don't need to understand, you just need to do what I tell you."

"Herbert, please! What's wrong?" She went up to him.

"Don't touch me!" He yelled at her, and backed away.

"I'm sorry." She said, looking down, and grabbing the bag. "I'll um, ask them for a favor downstairs."

"Thank you."

He began to leave.

"Who are they?" She asked.

"That is none of your concern." He said.

"Herbert, what the hell is the matter with you?" She ran up to him.

He stared at her with hate in his eyes and he shook his head.

"Please…" he tried, "just do this for me." And to this she nodded.

"Sure." She said further.

He was about to leave before he paused and turned back to her.

"Did you know anything about my father?" He asked.

She looked up at him, and she wanted to tell him, my mother said he hit you but not to tell you that she knew. She wanted to say she knew he was abusive and cruel and a drunk, she wanted to say that she knew that he really wasn't his real father because that was impossible given his mother, but no one knew the real father, for he left before anyone knew to ask. She knew this, all the nurses knew this, they were there when he was born, they were there as he came back with bruises.

"Is this your blood, Herbert?" She asked.

He then held her wrist very tightly as if about to break it.

"You tell no one." He told her.

She was not scared. How could she be scared of the boy she'd beat in the simplest of childhood games? She was oblivious to his brilliance when she was little as she would always beat him in their games, she didn't know he just wasn't trying because he found it boring, found her boring. But she stared up at him and she grew very sad for him.

She shook her head, fearless.

"I won't. I promise." She promised.

And she watched as the anger slowly went away, and Herbert West began to calm down. He heaved in heavily as if he had been holding his breath this entire time.

He began to leave, again stopped.

"You have to come back you know." She said.

"Yes, for the test results." He said.

"No, to tell me what Europe was like."

-----------------

The sun rise came to him, bathed his cold sweat in warmth. But he saw no beauty to it, he saw no beauty in that giant gas ball that held so much gravity to it, no beauty in that hellish fire ball that would one day erupt and consume all life it had caused. Like a father regretting his child. He did not know what to think of the situation he found himself in. He reflected on his childhood to find no evidence of this man who lived underground, the man with the two eye colors, this man who claimed to be his real father. It wasn't so much that the man claimed to be his father, for fathers for Herbert weren't important as made by the man he killed. Family was not something Herbert West knew, the saying blood is thicker than water, was completely lost upon him.

But it was the idea that there was another Re-animator, living right below his feet all this time. A man who claimed to care about him, casting him away to fend for himself in that so flawed world when all his life Herbert had attempted to reject it. Life in that laboratory was sounding all the more appealing. Where Herbert would not have known of the beauty he was missing, the love he was missing, there would be no distractions, no anything, there would only be the work. How wonderful it would have been to have been raised solely for that work, and to come into the world with a welcoming heart.

Even more disturbing beyond all else, was the fact that the man had said he was dying.

This frightened him.

Herbert West knew the coldness of death, and he truly did fear it. He did not want to go back, he did not want to die again. The very idea of it sent him back to those few moments where he lacked life. He was afraid. His better judgment told him that the man was lying, yet the mere possibility, the idea…he feared he'd be force to work with that man below just to save himself. Truly Herbert wanted to learn all the man knew and kill him, he did not like competition, he did not being toyed with

Daniel sat on the porch, waiting for Herbert West to return. He had heard West run out of the house but an hour ago during the night, and he has waited ever since, slowly rolling out of Meg's arms and bed. Now Daniel Cain was sure there was something wrong with his friend. Daniel shuddered at what it could be. He was afraid most of all it somehow related to Herbert's father, but Dan did not want to think Herbert had much to do with that, but Dan knew Herbert, he knew him well.

Dan felt a responsibility over Herbert. Especially since his death and his reanimation. He felt Herbert was coming into a world he obviously didn't understand and didn't want to understand and Dan was trying so hard to force it down his throat. This is what is called love, this is fun, this is joy, this is anger, this is sadness, and this is what it is to be happy. Sitting there on Herbert's porch he grew sad thinking of what Herbert had done all his life before Dan met him. How lonely the work must have been, how horrible it must have been for a child.

Daniel was having trouble balancing Megan with Herbert, as he was taking care of both of them now, and each demanded a very different side of him. He knew Meg would wake up soon, she was an early bird like that, and she would hate to wake with him not there. He didn't blame Herbert for this any more, he used to when he first met him, but not anymore.

"Why did you choose me?" Dan asked after the silence.

"What do you mean?"

"You had all your life keeping your discoveries to yourself, and you choose me of all people to share them with?"

"I did not realize your relationship with Meg."

Dan gave a smile to this.

"Do you even understand what she and I have?" Dan asked. "When you see us, do you know what's happening?"

"Chemical charges respond to stimu…" Herbert spoke.

"No! Herbert, I mean…if I died would you…"

"You told me not to bring you back." Herbert interrupted.

"No, would you be sad?"

Sadness, despair, faults Herbert wished not to get himself involved with. Sadness as he understood it, and he understood it probably better than any other emotion, was the most distracting and self destructing of the emotions possible. Sadness, Herbert was once a very sad person, however he worked very hard to get rid of these things, as he remembers very distinctively at his adolescent age not liking them in the least. Herbert meanwhile mused on the idea of being sad, without completely considering what it would be like if Dan died.

"I suppose I would be disappointed." Herbert said.

"In what?"

"Well, several reasons. One you would not allow me to attempt to bring you back. Two that I would allow such a thing to occur. Three you would allow such a thing to occur. Four I would be without a set of hands. Five we would not find our answers together."

Herbert told these things in a very mechanical manner that truly sucked up the humanity in the last statement there, that Dan had to really focus on to realize that was quite a nice thing to say. Dan was a bit shocked for a moment as he stared at West who seemed not to understand the impact of his own words, or perhaps not register them as being strong evidence to true friendship, the likes of which Daniel had not seen.

"You used to scare me, West." Dan said, sitting back. "You look at dead bodies in a strange way, and you began looking at me that way. I thought you might…I was very afraid, and I tried to stay helpful so such a thing would not happen." Dan said.

"I would not kill you, Dan." Herbert said very plainly. "Except for extreme conditions."

"Oh? Like what?"

"You were going to turn me in."

"Yeah, I'd turn you in, in a heartbeat." Dan smiled. "God, what would that newspaper say? 'Herbert West, Re-animator.'" Dan held up his arms gesturing the words. "There was a while there I really would have though, the same time you looked at me that way, but, Herbert, it's over isn't it?" Dan asked.

"No." Herbert said plainly.

Herbert watched as Dan seemed to grow very, very sad, but then he looked up.

"You know what I want to do?" Dan asked. "I want to open a practice with you."

"You are much more suited for the Emergency room, Dan."

"Yeah but I wouldn't want to tempt you." Dan smiled and Herbert glared a bit.

Then silence came.

"Then what was it? Why'd you pick me?" He asked again.

"You are brilliant. You are fast. Your hands are delicate and strong and they save lives. You have an unmistakable hatred of death. You fight, and fight, denying its victory." Herbert said.

"That makes me a good canindate, but still, why'd you tell anyone in the first place? I mean…you obviously didn't want to be that social with me." Dan gave a grin.

Herbert stared long and hard at him then at the floor.

"I suppose…it was a lapse in judgment." Herbert said. "A fault in my psyche."

"You were lonely?"

"I did not say that."

"Sure you didn't." Dan smiled and Herbert glared at him. "Come on, you're only human. Remember that." Dan tried. "You are Herbert West, you are a human being. You have flaws and you have boundaries."

Herbert stared as if he didn't believe him.

"Come on." Daniel looked increasingly worried. "All of this, Herbert? And you were never lonely?"

"I was lonely." Herbert admits. "I was tired of fending off the dead by myself, and you showed such interest in my theories when others scolded me."

"Like Hill."

"Like Hill."

"Well, Herbert, it's a real honor." Dan said. "And you know, I take our friendship very seriously, I understand I think how difficult it was for you to do what you did. So, listen. I know something is wrong, I want you to tell me."

"Dan…"

"Herbert, I pulled a god damn woman you made yourself off of you! I…I pulled those intestines off of you as it was choking you to death. I brought you back when you'd died!" Daniel tries.

And Herbert merely stared.

"You may be willing to do these things again, but you do not want to."

"Of course not!" Dan laughed. "Do you?"

Herbert stared in confirmation.

"You cannot help me with this, Dan." Herbert told. "This is something I must do without you. It will not hurt me, or you, or your Meg. No harm shall come from this, you won't even notice. But I may have to stay here as you return home."

"What are you talking about? You got to finish school."

"So I can what? Become a doctor?" He said with such disdain.

"Yeah!"

"I am not a doctor, Dan, I am the complete opposite. I do not want to help people like you, I do not like people. The world is overpopulated, I would be pleased to have the population suddenly fall."

"Herbert…"

"Just know that we are safe. And I will handle this on my own."

"Herbert, listen to me. You've put me through a bunch of shit, and you've made me question everything I have ever loved or believed in, the least you owe me is knowing what the hell is going on."

"What I owe you is what you want, and what you want, has nothing to do with me."

"That's not true."

"Go tell Meg that."

Daniel stopped.

"I didn't make a lot of friends." Daniel said. "I mean I had friends, a group of people like any kid did, right?"

Herbert had no idea what he was talking about.

"Herbert, I am your friend."

"I know. But am I yours?"

Herbert shook his head.

"Now, I do this out of what you would call kindness, so stay out of it."

And with this Herbert left.

-----------------

Next Chapter coming soon.

I always felt that Herbert would be very strong and held down by his own ethics. Meaning if he didn't like Daniel Cain his ethics would at least bind him to not killing him, for Daniel Cain has done so much for him. It may not be friendship as we know it, but perhaps it is the closest thing Herbert is able to achieve at this moment. Herbert and Dan's relationship is so very interesting to me. We have Herbert West who feels superior to all people and uses them like tools, with his assistant Daniel Cain, made his assistant in a stroke of unknown loneliness. Herbert feels he must take care of Dan as they experiment, knowing full well Dan is not as…say strong in that manner. Yet Daniel feels he too must take care of West, control those urges West gets, and monitor him, and try to show him the life he's lost. Each taking responsibility for the other, I just like it.

I didn't want to pull a Star Wars on you people, but just keep with it, there's a twist unseen, friends and family must be weighed.

Just picture today's Jeffrey Combs as Herbert's dad.


End file.
